'Hypnotic and reverent': Why a 12th-century mystic appeals to 21st

This weekend, Vermont Public Classical will partner with the Otter Creek Music Festival to present “Hildegard Reanimated,” a visual and musical reimagining of Hildegard von Bingen's music, poetry, and art.

Vermont Public's Jenn Jarecki recently sat down with Helen Lyons of Vermont Public Classical to talk about this still-popular mystic and Saturday’s performance.

Jenn Jarecki: I kind of want to start big and broad here, so apologies in advance to the medieval scholars listening. Briefly, who is Hildegard von Bingen?

Helen Lyons: How long do we have? She was a really amazing person, but in a sort of nutshell, she was a 12th-century Benedictine abbess. She was a composer, a writer, a visionary and she's also one of the earliest known female composers in Western music. She was also