After Organum, after Sequentia (both 9/97), here are Anonymous 4, offering their contribution to the growing number of recordings of Hildegard’s St Ursula music. St Ursula, by the way, seems to have held a particular fascination for Hildegard, particularly since her own fame and fervour were attracting to her monastery more and more female recruits (not 11,000, of course, and not even Ursula could have sustained such a claim, though that was the number believed to be correct by the Middle Ages, through a misreading of XI MV – “11 Virgin Martyrs”).
Organum gave us a realistic nunnish sound of female chest voices singing rather drearily – as must often have been the case. Sequentia’s performance was rapturous; they really caught something of the spirit of Hildegard. And now, Anonymous 4’s pure perfection, such perfection as never, never could have been, if truth were to be told. A perfect blend: you really can’t tell whether one, two, three or four are singing. That’s perhaps precisely why the Invitatory sounds just a trifle dull: it needs more contrast between solo and choir to spring into life. There’s such a continuity of bland perfection with an impeccable acoustic, that even the singers themselves must have come to realize that something was lacking. Inevitably, they chose to solve the problem – by adding drones and two-part polyphony to the psalmody and the final “Deo gratias”. The booklet is a work of art in itself, beautifully produced with informative notes and fresh translations.'