Cancelled

Abstract:

Around 1163, Hildegard wrote out a list of the types of knowledge she received in her visions that she was recording in written form. Among these is a symphonia harmoniae celestium revelationum (music of the harmony of celestial revelations). Since the first of  Barbara Newman’s editions appeared in the 1990s this title has been used for editions of Hildegard’s collected songs, but is nowhere connected to such a collection in Hildegard’s known works. Dr Flynn will examine the genesis of the surviving collections (text-only and notated) along with the necessary fictions editors often create. 

Bio

William Flynn’s commitment to interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the Middle Ages has grown naturally from his own formation in multiple disciplines, starting with music studies at the Eastman School of Music and University of Edinburgh with an emphasis in music composition and six years as a professional church musician, followed by theological studies at Duke University, bringing a practical experience of the use of music in religious contexts to his research interests in music and texts written for eleventh- and twelfth-century Western liturgies. He has been at Leeds since 2000, where he teaches Medieval Latin to MA and PhD students. He has a list of distinguished publications on the relationships cultivated in the Middle Ages between music and language arts, and their deployment for rhetorical purposes.