Michael C. Gardiner examines how classical Neoplatonic hierarchies are established in the Ordo Virtutum, Hildegard von Bingen's twelfth-century music-drama, and considers how these hierarchies are mediated and subverted through a series of concentric absorptions which lie at the core of the work's musical design and text.

Michael C. Gardiner is Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the University of Mississippi, USA.

1. A Metaphysical Medieval Assemblage 2. Analytic Introduction 3. Deterritorialized Bodies 4. The Taking-Place of Prayer 5. On Reterritorialization