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The St. Martial Manuscripts
“The earliest documentation of polyphony, specifically for two voices, is found in the four volumes of 10th–12th century manuscripts at St. Martial de Limoges, France. This style, called Aquitanian Polyphony, is thought to reference the location in which the manuscripts were collected from various other regions of France. Two singing styles predominate: florid organum and discantus. Organum style, as in Gaudia debita temporum, has a slow-moving bottom line with an upper ornate line. The discantus style involves both upper and lower voices syllable for syllable (or close to it), as you will hear in Omnis saltus Libani, Senescente mundano filio, and Mundo salus gratie.” (from the program notes)
The images above are selections from these manuscripts, showing colorful illustrations and musical notation in “heightened neumes” showing melodic contour and relative musical distances, but without staff lines.”
Jean Ritchie
Jean Ritchie was a profoundly influential American folk singer, musician, and folklorist whose life and work helped shape the 20th-century folk music revival. Born in Viper, Kentucky, in 1922, she grew up in a large Appalachian family steeped in traditional songs, stories, and games, learning hundreds of ballads orally from relatives and community members. Her deep repertoire included many British and Appalachian variants that she preserved and shared widely over her seven-decade career. Ritchie was a key cultural figure in the American folk scene, connecting Appalachia’s oral traditions with broader audiences, and she played a significant role in popularizing the mountain dulcimer, introducing the instrument to listeners far beyond its regional roots.
After graduating from the University of Kentucky with a degree in social work, Ritchie moved to New York City, where she taught songs to children and engaged with major figures in folk music, including Alan Lomax, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Oscar Brand. Her recordings, performances, and books—such as Singing Family of the Cumberlands and The Dulcimer Book—helped cement her legacy as both a preserver and interpreter of traditional music. Alongside her husband, photographer and filmmaker George Pickow, she documented folk traditions around the world and contributed extensively to archives such as the American Folklife Center. Ritchie’s impact was recognized with honors including a National Heritage Fellowship, and her extensive body of work remains a cornerstone of American folk heritage.
Photos and summary from Library of Congress (link)
Jean Ritchie with Woody Guthrie before an appearance on Oscar Brand’s radio show in New York City, 1948. George Pickow and Jean Ritchie Collection.
Jean Ritchie, Circa 1950. Photo by George Pickow. AFC George Pickow and Jean Ritchie Collection.
Hildegard of Bingen
Sibyl of the Rhine
Illumination from Hildegard's Scivias (1151) showing her receiving a vision and dictating to teacher Volmar
Interest in Hildegard started to grow around the 800th anniversary of her death in 1979, when Philip Pickett and his New London Consort gave possibly the first English performances of four of Hildegard’s songs…Accounts written in Hildegard’s lifetime and just after describe an extraordinarily accomplished woman: a visionary, a prophet (she was known as “The Sibyl Of The Rhine”), a pioneer who wrote practical books on biology, botany, medicine, theology and the arts. She was a prolific letter-writer to everyone from humble penitents looking for a cure for infertility to popes, emperors and kings seeking spiritual or political advice.
Her character was steely, determined and overbearing at times. But the nuns who flourished under her unorthodox regime were allowed extraordinary freedoms, such as wearing their hair long, uncovered and even crowned with flowers.
Nevertheless, Hildegard commanded the respect of the Church and political leaders of the day. She was a doer: she oversaw the building of a new monastery at Rupertsberg, near Bingen, to house her little community, and when that grew too large she established another convent in Eibingen, which still exists today (though the present building dates from 1904)...
When [the previous prioress] died in 1136, Hildegard was appointed prioress and it was then that she started writing music for the first time, for her nuns to sing as part of the Divine Office. The only music teaching Hildegard had received from Jutta was instruction in singing and the duties of a choir nun.
But she had grown up hearing the chants of the Roman mass and she set her own vibrant, colourful verses to music to create antiphons, responses, sequences and hymns.
from classicfm’s discovering great composers (link)
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