Hildegard von Bingen (1098 - 1179)

Born in Germany, Hildegard von Bingen composed music, founded a convent, created poetry for her music, and wrote about religion, art, politics, philosophy, science, medicine, and herbs. The high quality of her broad range of activities has assured her a prominent place in Western civilization many centuries later. Hildegard's musical corpus, which consists of settings of her own poetry, includes approximately seventy-seven sequences, antiphons, responsories, and hymns, as well as a liturgical drama, the Ordo virtutum. In spite of her claim to lack formal training in either the Latin language or music, Hildegard produced songs that were the equal of those written by the most admired men of the Middle Ages. The Hildegard Publishing Company is proud to pay homage to this early woman composer; we chose our name before her recent rise to public acclaim.