ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 analyzes of Part I of the Ordo and considers the ways in which it deterritorializes Hildegard’s musical language. “Deterritorialization” refers to a complex process whereby normative bodies undergo deformation in the production of a new assemblage or set-syntax. The term is also used in reference to the fallible perception of the divine by humanity as described by Augustine in the Confessions, a fallibility that will be perfected by the redeemed rhetoric and rightly ordered speech as a consequence of Christ’s incarnation. The musical deterritorializations serve as a corollary to the soul’s falling away from a virtuous path as outlined in the text of Part I. Three factors contribute to the deformation of Hildegard’s normative musical language: first, the restriction of all modal finals to D or E; second, the presence of a truncated melodic range; and third, the suppression of pitch-class B as a structural node in relation to the E finals of Part I. Together, these limitations help establish a musical context for the soul’s distension, or spiritual limitations.
