INEXPLICABLE – A medieval fever dream
Featuring the music of Hildegard of Bingen, Frauenlob (Heinrich von Messen), and anonymous 13th-century poets

Phylomena
Jasmina Črnčič – voice, harp
Mojca Jerman – vielle

This programme features poetry and melodies of a couple of medieval mystical visionaries, a man from the early fourteenth century and a woman from the twelfth, who have found their own unique and gripping way of making the inexplicable deliciously palpable. By having liquified their voices into ink and translating them onto parchment in the form of song for us to sing again, both are extending us an invitation to transcend time and space, and to become a part of their journeys. One of the most wonderful things about being human, is that not only does inspiration know no expiry date, it is also inexhaustibly contagious; and it is by virtue of such shared joy that we collectively grow as humanity, one evening at a time, gently, stretched over the centuries.

The subject tonight is Love — that inexplicable kind which on one hand tends to leave us bleeding, destroyed, healed, feverishly wanting more. On the other hand the language of its experiential immediacy traditionally presents itself as the most suitable way for describing an individual’s spiritual quest and the dual nature of hunger for love as hunger for spiritual awakening, of unity with the Divine. It is woven into songs of passion, fire, breath, adoration and all of the in between, and it is that which has always dwelled at the very core of what it ultimately means to possess a spark of the Divine.

INEXPLICABLE — a medieval fever dream explores one aspect of this complex ebb and flow from the perspective of two
medieval German poets: the twelfth-century visionary and doctor ecclesiae, St. Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), and the fourteenth-century court poet Heinrich von Meissen (ca. 1250-1318), more commonly known by his stage name Frauenlob. Both have in their compositions used all of their creative force to compose masterpieces of adoration of Mary, Mother of God, the Celestial Woman of the Book of Revelation, and the Beloved Bride of the Song of Songs, respectively. In a succession of intensely dense poems, the program offers a taste of this inexplicable complexity of worship which has always stood in the very centre of theological erudition since the New Testament.

TICKETS €15/€10 GEN/OAP (Under 18s FREE)