1098–1179

Abbess
Author
Composer

The First Female Composer.

Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) is the earliest known female composer, and possibly the most famous woman of her time. She was a member of a noble family near Spanheim in the Rhineland (modern Germany), and was educated at the Benedictine cloister of Disiboden. She was elected abbess in 1136, but in 1147 left Disiboden with eighteen other nuns and founded a convent at Rupertsberg in the Rhine valley near the town of Bingen. She was a prolific writer on subjects as diverse as science, medicine, and saints' lives, and during her own time was revered as a prophet and mystic. Her musical compositions include a number of sequences, antiphons, hymns, and other sacred forms for the feasts of women saints and the Blessed Virgin. She also is the author of the Ordo Virtutum (Play of Virtues), the earliest surviving morality...