The “secret voices” of the album’s title refers to Cistercian nuns (of mostly aristocratic birth) living at Las Huelgas, a convent near Burgos in south-central Spain. The “secret” was that these women were singing polyphony (music with two or more voices with independent melodies) despite an edict from church fathers forbidding the practice. The polyphonic music, as well as secular and other forms of sacred music, is found in the Codex Las Huelgas, a collection of European music spanning the entire 13th and early 14th centuries. Anonymous 4 sing music from the Codex on this new recording.
