Hildegard of Bingen: life and music of the great female composer

Hildegard of Bingen was a saint, composer and poet. But it's only recently that her songs, writings and remarkable life and visions have been rediscovered. She was born over 900 years ago and for most of her 80-plus years was shut away in an obscure hilltop monastery in the Rhineland. This remarkable woman had left behind a treasure-trove of illuminated manuscripts, scholarly writings and songs written for her nuns to sing at their devotions. Interest in Hildegard started to grow around the 800th anniversary of her death in 1979, when Philip Pickett and his New London Consort gave possibly the first English performances of four of Hildegard’s songs. And, in 1983, the success of A Feather On The Breath Of God, an album of her music, piqued people’s curiosity about the author of these sensual, vivid, lyrical songs.