Hildegard Von Bingen, The First Composer

Human beings have created music for eons. Even in the Stone Age there was music. The ancient Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, ALL had music. But with the rarest of exceptions we cannot listen to this ancient music. Virtually every bit of music played before 1000 AD is lost to us because there was no standard way to describe it so people in the future would be able to replicate it.

Around 1000 AD a man named Guido of Arezzo figured out a way to write music down and a new age began, an age where musicians could record their compositions so that later composers would be able to read and study and build upon the work of their predecessors.

Guido wrote a book called the Micrologus about 1026 which was one of the two most important musical texts of the Middle Ages.

In this new age, one of the very first great composers, if not the very first, was Hildegard Von Bingen who was born in 1098. She was an abbess who corresponded with popes and emperors. She was a mystic who wrote books about theology and botany and medicine.

And she was a composer - a great composer - perhaps the very first great composer in history, who can still live for us today.

Interestingly, Hildegard composed one musical drama with a role for the devil, but she did not give the devil any music. He just has to shout his lines! A nice touch....

Click on the link below to hear one of her masterpieces.

Hildegrad Von Bingen - Ave Maria, O Auctrix Vite

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[Here is a huge book about the early history of Western music. https://amzn.to/42Qx3vx ]

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Copyright © 2016 by Joseph Wayne Gadway