On today's date in the year 1179, in the German convent of Ruppertsberg near Bingen, an 81-year-old abbess named Hildegard breathed her last. The 12th century was a time of great accomplishments in art, religion, and human thought, a kind of medieval Renaissance, and Hildegard of Bingen was one of the most remarkable women of that remarkable time.

She recorded the precise moment when her life became a part of that reawakening: "When I was 42 years and seven months old," she writes, "a burning light of tremendous brightness coming from heaven poured into my entire mind, like a flame that does not burn but enkindles. All at once I was able to taste of the understanding of books—the Psalter, the Evangelists, and the Books of the Old and New Testaments."

Hildegard of Bingen expressed her new awareness in music, and soon became famous throughout Europe as a major religious visionary and writer. She is one of the earliest Western composers we know by name, and left as her legacy a large body of highly original music. Largely forgotten for centuries by all but medieval specialists, in the late 20th century some recordings of Hildegard's music sparked renewed interest in her life and music, and her very old music seemed destined to resonate in a very new age.