Medieval Catholicism retained a vivid and enduring belief in the supernatural world of angels, saints, demons, healings, and miracles. The angels in this panoply included not only the general class of heavenly beings destined for praise at the Throne of God, but also particular beings and personalities: Saint Michael the commander of the heavenly host, Saint George the slayer of the dragon, Saint Gabriel of the Annunciation. These are not necessarily sweet Victorian creatures, but rather spiritual beings of immense power and awesomeness. No medieval scholar would forget that Lucifer himself was fallen from the class of angels, a being strong in power but perverted in personal intent. The Catholic liturgy contained reverential commemorations of many of the most popular individual angels; it also developed both poetry and music to produce worship services dedicated to angels within a more local devotion (just as it contained music for any faithful martyr, confessor, virgin martyr, etc., without a specific service). One of Hildegard's two antiphons in this category, appropriate to a worship service in honor of an angel begins O gloriosissimi lux vivens angeli.

Her Latin poem addresses the "O most glorious living light of the angels who, divine among the divine eyes with mystical obscurity, behold all creatures with ardent desire." She continues to praise the mystical form of their being, their presence at the beginning of creation, and their power, unfortunately through the example of the "lost angel" (Satan), who desired to ascend above the pinnacle of God and was therefore given to ruin and torture. This punishment, however, in itself even reveals the conciliatory hand of God. Hildegard's melodic opening is somewhat equivocal in its modal center; its tonic seems to be the Phrygian E, but the melody refuses to anchor that pitch either with the upper or lower B, instead hovering around upper and lower A. Each description of angelic beauty and grace fails to anchor itself in musical stability until her text mentions the primal form of the angels, which Satan lost. The will of the fallen angel earns the most extensive melisma of the piece, including some very torturous melodic leaps. Only the final lines of Hildegard's poem, with their tentative hope for reconciliation between the fallen and their God, establish the musical mode with the melodic stability common to her antiphons of praise: the familiar and strong melodic gambit of leaps from tonic to fifth to octave tonic she reserves for this moment.

© Timothy Dickey, All Music Guide