We are studying St. Hildegard von Bingen’s music this month. I’ve updated the sidebar to play one of her compositions this week and will try to change that every week this month. (After the music changes, the embedded player will be moved to the corresponding post.)

This week’s selection is Columba Aspexit from the album Feather on the Breath of God, performed by Gothic Voices and featuring Soprano Emma Kirkby.

You can find the lyrics and a translation here.

This is a short summary of her life that I compiled for the 4real Forum:

St. Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) was a German abbess, visionary mystic and composer. She was born of noble parents in Bockelheim, Germany, and was educated at the Benedictine cloister of Disibodenberg by her aunt Jutta, an anchorite and sister of the count of Spanheim, whom Hildegard succeeded as prioress in 1136.

She started having visions while still a child and at 43 43 she consulted her confessor, who reported the matter to the archbishop of Mainz. A committee of theologians subsequently confirmed the authenticity of Hildegard’s visions, and a monk was appointed to help her record them in writing.

The finished work, her best known, is Scivias (1141–52). It relates 26 of her visions that are prophetic and apocalyptic in form and in their treatment of such topics as the church, the relationship between God and man, and redemption.

About 1147 Hildegard left Disibodenberg with several nuns to found a new convent at Rupertsberg, where she continued to exercise the gift of prophecy and to record her visions in writing.

A talented poet and composer, Hildegard collected 77 of her lyric poems, each with a musical setting composed by her, in Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum. Her numerous other writings include lives of saints; two treatises on medicine and natural history, reflecting a quality of scientific observation rare at that period; and extensive correspondence, in which are to be found further prophecies and allegorical treatises.

Although never formally canonized, Hildegard is included as a saint in the Roman Martyrology.

(taken mostly from Encyclopedia Britannica, with a few additions from Catholic.org, the Catholic Encyclopedia and Cooking with the Saints)

More from Catholic Encyclopedia.