ABSTRACT
Peering into any particular corner of Hildegard von Bingen's creative life is somewhat like walking through a hall of mirrors. Though images are clear and distinct, the boundaries between them are difficult to locate in any real space, physical or mental. In ways that defy easy description, her music is wondrously intertwined with her mystical visions, the fount from which all her remarkable gifts flowed, with her poetry and theological views, with her piety and her vanities, with the divine and the mundane, with the spiritual and the patently political. And, like all other aspects of her life, the music both reflects and projects her position as a woman in her society.
