Hildegarde Von Bingen - The Threads Of The Air
Musician Sarah Angliss (London, UK) draws on the botanical writing of Hildegard von Bingen, a twelfth-century Christian mystic, to help make sense of her own experiences of illness, healing and the turn of the season while the city is in lockdown. Sarah will immerse us in a sonic fever dream, using fragments of Hildegard’s texts on herbal medicine to explore her personal experiences of fever as she examines Hildegard’s ecstatic visions. She discusses how Hildegard’s progressive approach to washing rituals and the observation of nature reverberate through the ages. At a time when we’re facing a new pathogen that reveals the limits of modern medicine, it’s hard not to feel an affinity with people who experienced contagions in Hildegard’s time. We’re retreating to measures that would not have seemed unfamiliar to her, in the absence of a cure. This podcast features a score specially written by Sarah, which responds to Hildegard’s writing on The Threads of The Air - describing the purifying properties of the air as summer comes and goes.
Composer, performer and electronic artist Sarah Angliss creates finely-wrought music, hard to classify, where acoustic instruments, electronics and robotics, aiming to create a soundworld with a sense of the uncanny and a powerful emotional heft. “Music possessed of an eerie instability…a whole universe unto itself brimming with fresh propositions and new directions…a shimmering, minimalist masterpiece.” (The Wire Magazine).
Sarah Angliss’s highly inventive work reflects an eclectic musical background. A classically-trained composer and instrumentalist, who specialised early on in both electronics and ancient music, Sarah also has a background in biologically-inspired robotics. She combines these disciplines to create her highly distinctive soundworld. A prolific live performer, Angliss also applies her unusual sonic techniques to theatre. In 2018 Sarah received a Composer’s Award from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
