Hildegard of Bingen to be canonized

RomeReports.com has reported that Pope Benedict has plans to canonize Hildegard von Bingen a to make her a Doctor of the Church.

Hildegard is the earliest known (i.e. named) composer of sacred music in the Roman Catholic tradition and therefore in the Western music tradition, and is the first name you will hear in a music history class. She was born 48 years after the death of Guido d’Arezzo and was one of the first to take advantage of his newly created musical staff for the purposes of composition. Here compositional style was monodic and is, we might say, one of the most organic outgrowths of the Gregorian chant repertoire that we have.