What is the Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum?
[back to contents] The Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum (Symphony of the Harmony of Celestial Revelations), is a collection of 77 chants with melody and rubrication indicating liturgical use (Jeffries notes that it is unclear if these rubrics are even accurate leading modern scholars to speculate if all of the chants were intended for use in the Divine Office or Mass, or as Newman has suggested as part of Hildegard’s sermons.) The most complete 12th century collections of these chants exist in the Dendermonde Codex Ms. 9 (ca. 1174/75), and the Riesencodex Hs.2 (ca. 1180). Hildegard mentions the Symphonia specifically in the introduction to her Liber vitae meritorum. According to this account, she wrote the Symphonia between the years 1151-1158, after she had moved to Rupertsberg. As more evidence is uncovered, it is now widely accepted that what exists in the aforementioned manuscripts include compositions written before her move to Rupertsberg and quite possibly after 1158. It
