For this revised edition of Hildegard's liturgical song 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. Songs from it are now being performed regularly by early music groups, and more than twenty compact discs have been recorded.

Barbara Newman is Professor of English, Religion, and Classics and John Evans Professor of Latin at Northwestern University. Her other books include Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard's Theology of the Feminine; From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature; Voice of the Living Light; and God and the Goddesses.