St Hildegard

Catherine Bott chats to Fiona Maddocks about the remarkable life of the German abbess, visionary, poet and composer Hildegard of Bingen who died on 17th September 1179. Hildegard wrote that she experienced visions from an early age and as a child entered the monastery at Disibodenberg on the Rhine; Hildegard was later to found monasteries in Rupertsburg and later in Eibingen. Throughout her life, Hildegard continued to have visions and later began to record what she experienced, 'Scivias', which contains 14 lyric texts that appeared with music. Hildegard extensive musical settings of her own poetry dated back at least to the 1140's, and totals over 70 songs, antiphons, responses, sequences, and her 'Ordo virtutum', possibly the oldest surviving morality play. Catherine Bott and writer Fiona Maddocks discuss this fascinating character, whose Saint's Day falls on September 17th.