SymphoniaFamous throughout Europe during her lifetime, Hildegard of Bingen (1098 1179) was a remarkably gifted woman by any standards: a composer and poet, she was also a writer on scientific, medical and theological subjects, an abbess, a visionary prophet, and a saint of the Roman Catholic church. One of the relatively few female writers and even fewer female composers of the Middle Ages whose work has survived to the present, Hildegard was neglected for