Hildegard — The visionary music of medieval Europe's most remarkable woman

Saint Hildegard of Bingen is perhaps Medieval Europe's most remarkable woman. She was a prolific writer, a theologian, a mystic, and Europe's first known female composer. It been about 1000 years since she lived, but why is the music she wrote so popular today?

Guests: 

Jennifer Bain is a professor from Dalhousie University in Canada. Jennifer edited the Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, and she's also the author of several works on Hildegard's music and its reception.

Sylvia MacRitchie-Hook did postgraduate research about Hildegard as a Ramsay Scholar at the Australian Catholic University. Her thesis is Art as Revelation: A Theological Aesthetic Reading of Hildegard of Bingen's Scivias.

More info: 

• The isolation and imagination of the first female English author (Soul Search)
• Hilda-thon! Eight hours of music by Hildegard von Bingen (ABC Classic)