A Touch of Heaven

Irish singer and teacher, EILISH BUTLER, combines the mystical chant of Saint Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1176) with the evolutionary path of Uncovering the Voice, satisfying her passion for mystical spirituality and music.

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To sing Hildegard is to have a direct experience of her spirituality and, subsequently, my own. There is no more direct way to understand and feel Hildegard’s vision of the world than to sing any of her seventy-seven compositions from the Symphonia armoniae celestium revelationem. The Symphonia is Hildegard’s collection of chants comprising antiphons, hymns, sequences, and responsories. It establishes her as the first named composer in the Western world, an extraordinary feat given that she was a woman at the end of the eleventh century.

Whether it happens instantly or incrementally, when I sing Hildegard, I feel the visionary power of her chant opening me up to a new way of being; I enter a process of spiritual exploration in which the voice leads the way. For each singer, this is personal, touching us directly and deeply as only the evolutionary power of love can. Hildegard understood how love can be harnessed and channeled through her chant.

Just as St. Augustine is thought to have said, “