Hildegard von Bingen was a true polymath: abbess, visionary, writer, composer, traveling preacher, and writer of practical and theoretical medical texts. Hildegard was equally at home in spiritual realm as in the earthier matters of the body and the natural world. In fact, she is considered in Germany as the founder of natural science. If one wishes for a specific example of her enduring legacy, one need only to study her writing of the use of hops to preserve beer as the first known reference to the topic.

As composer, she is equally as groundbreaking. The practice of her 12th-century contemporaries was to combine music to randomly selected texts and sign, Anonymous. Hildegard broke from this tradition to wrote her own text, and crafting it into soaring lines that pushed the limits of Gregorian chant. From the void of rhythmless, improvised chant, she created form and shape with the use recurring motives to develop the music and hold the listener’s attention. We have more surviving works by Hildegard than by any other in the entire Middle Ages.

About the improvisation:

The image of eternity, as set by Hildegard, conjured in my mind a dark swatch of distant blue. I felt the large dark soaring pillars of the cathedrals and the play of the various light beams through the stained glass window.