Benedetta

Composer: Anne Dudley – View bio »

Release Date (digital): 25 January 2022

About the album

This is award-winning composer Anne Dudley’s soundtrack to the Paul Verhoeven directed film ‘Benedetta’. The film which stars Virginie Efira, Daphne Patakia and Charlotte Rampling, is based on the book ‘Immodest Acts: The Life Of A Lesbian Nun In Renaissance Italy’ which was published in 1986 and written by historian Judith C Brown.

‘Based on a true story, a 17th-century nun becomes entangled in a forbidden lesbian affair with a novice. But it is Benedetta’s shocking religious visions that threaten to shake the Church to its core.’

‘Benedetta’ is set in a medieval nunnery and is based on a real-life case of a Benedetta Carlini, a nun who experienced shocking and erotic religious visons. Working on this was a wonderful opportunity for me to explore some of the music of Hildegard von Bingen, herself an abbess and mystic and one of the earliest composers from whom we have written manuscripts. Some of her music was adapted for some scenes and I used the texture of female voices as a significant element of the score. The score is not consciously “medieval” and uses contemporary instruments and harmonic language. Paul Verhoeven’s script explores issues such as religious belief, hypocrisy and the subjugation of women in the male-dominated hierarchy of the medieval Catholic church. – Anne Dudley