Abbess of Rupertsberg, which she herself founded, Hildegard of Bingen held an important position as a religious, a mystic, a diplomat, a writer on a wide variety of subjects and a composer. A visionary, she was highly respected, her advice widely sought by the powerful in church and state. As a poet she writes in a style replete with colourful imagery, as in her books of visions.
Religious Music
The music of Hildegard of Bingen is contained in her Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum (Symphonic Harmony of Celestial Revelations), the Latin texts dealing with the hierarchy of Heaven, from God, Father and Son to Confessors, Virgins and Innocents. Her monophonic musical language is based on a number of varied melodic formulae. Her morality play Ordo virtutum (Order of Virtues), written some 150 years after the Terentian verse plays of the nun Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, also includes music of a simpler and more syllabic kind.
