Hildegard von Bingen
The original woman in voice. On international women's day, a tribute to the first named composer in history.
On international women’s day, I’d like to point you to a composer of some of the most beautiful music for voice: Hildegard von Bingen. She lived in the 12th century, an era in which it was perfectly normal to send off a young girl to a monastery to spend her life there (and that’s when you were lucky). Boys didn’t have much of a career choice either; childhood hadn’t been invented yet.
Her own way
In this age, Hildegard went her own way. She loved to learn, and held a rather original view of the world. In her eyes, men and women were each other’s equal in every sense. And she saw women as the givers of life. This might sound normal or even obvious to us now, but in times when the bible was taken very, very literally, this must have sounded nothing less than revolutionary. After all, in Christian Europe, life originated from Adam, and women caused original sin.
Incubator 0.1
Hildegard started her own female monastery, a true breeding ground for creativity, science and innovation. We’d probably call it an incubator today. The nuns’ revolutionary work in theology, natural science, linguistics, poetry, music and mysticism soon became so popular that it drew the attention of the established order. Hildegard soon became notorious for inviting herself for religious bulwarks and starting critical discussions with male clerics.
Even though women were not allowed to preach, Hildegard took to the road and made four great journeys. She preached about the beauty of nature, the equality of women and men, and the importance of scientific evidence long before these became popular themes in the European Renaissance. At the end of her life, she was excommunicated from the church, because she buried a non-religious friend in holy ground.
Music
Hildegard von Bingen is the first composer ever whose name has been mentioned in written text. When she was around 40, she started to have visions (which, according to modern medics, were caused by severe bouts of migraine). She bundled them in Scivias, ‘Know your way’. She also put some of those texts to music: unison psalms and hymns that musically resemble Gregorian chant, but that describe much more personal experiences and events. They are strongly meditative in character.
Some 40 of Hildegard’s compositions have survived. One of the most subversive must undoubtedly have been ‘Quia ergo femina’, which celebrates women’s power to give life.
And with this piece of beautiful music from an extraordinary woman, I wish everybody a happy international Women’s day.