In this revised edition of Hildegard’s liturgical cycle, Barbara Newman has redone her prose translations of the songs, updated the bibliography and discography, and made other minor changes. Also included is an essay by Marianne Richert Pfau which delineates the connection between music and text in the Symphonia . Famous throughout Europe during her lifetime, Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was a composer and a poet, a writer on theological, scientific and medical subjects, an abbess and a visionary prophet. One of the very few female composers of the Middle Ages whose work has survived, Hildegard was neglected for centuries until her liturgical song cycle was rediscovered.