Music Education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

6 A Proper Musical Education for Antwerp’s Women

6 AProperMusicalEducation forAntwerp’sWomen• Kristine K. Forney • In recent years, scholars have uncovered diverse—and contradictory—evidence about the social mores and attitudes that shaped women’s values and activities at various societal levels and geographic locales throughout Europe. The Low Countries, and especially the commercial center of Antwerp, provide a rich case study with which to trace changing values throughout the sixteenth century, from the onset of the Reformation through the CounterReformation , toward a musical education for Antwerp’s women. Archival and literary evidence, iconographic depictions, and extant musical sources enhance our view of the music young women were encouraged to study, what music they liked to perform, and the level of achievement they could meet. In addition to solo music for voice, keyboard, and strings for entertainment— largely secular genres—devotional songs figured prominently in the musical training of northern girls, for whom some musical ability was generally expected. Although Neoplatonic thought praised music along with feminine beauty as valued attributes for young women, contradictions do arise. Two instructional manuals for young women can be particularly associated with Antwerp. The first is De institutione feminae christianae (Antwerp, 1523) by the Spanish-born humanist Juan Luis Vives, who settled in Bruges after teaching in England. This tract, written for the English queen Catherine A Proper Musical Education for Antwerp's Women · 85 of Aragon while Vives was teaching at Oxford, was issued in more than forty editions and was available to young schoolgirls in Dutch, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and English. Vives believed that the sexes were fundamentally equal in their ability to learn and that an education was the key to avoiding lust and evil pleasures. He followed earlier conservative writers, however, in warning that dancing and music inflamed the passions; therefore, women should not make a public display of either.1 As for singing, he suggests only “honest, serious, and decent” songs.2 Giovanni Michele Bruto, a member of the Italian community in Antwerp, also wrote an influential treatise on education for women; in it, he quoted the legend of the sirens to warn against the ravishing but dangerous combination of musical ability and beauty—one that might invite comparison to a whore. Bruto admits that “most men are of the opinion that to a gentlewoman of honor and reputation, it is a grace and ornament if she becometh expert to sing and play upon divers instruments”; still, he promotes total abstinence from music for women, leaving the vice to “people who are riotous and idle.”3 These warnings were sounded even louder in Italy, where attitudes were generally more conservative: Pietro Aretino declared in 1537 that “the knowledge of playing instruments, of singing, and of writing poetry, on the part of women, is the very key which opens the doors to their modesty,”4 and Cardinal Pietro Bembo admonished his young daughter in 1541 that “playing an instrument is a thing for vain and frivolous women.”5 Despite these cautions, historian Ludovico Guicciardini’s famous study of the Low Countries reveals that music-making permeated Flemish burgher life. He claimed that “Belgians are indeed true masters . . . of music; they have studied it to perfection, having men and women sing without learning, but with a real instinct for tone and measure, they also use instruments of all sorts which everyone understands and knows.” In Antwerp, “one can see at almost every hour of the day weddings, dancing, and musical groups . . . there is hardly a corner of the streets not filled with the joyous sounds of instrumental music and singing.”6 Guicciardini provides a detailed and highly opinionated assessment of the women of the Low Countries and especially Antwerp (given in full as document 1 in appendix A), claiming that views about them were very liberal and that these women were involved not only in managing their houses, but also in their husbands’ businesses. He found the women of Antwerp, however, too domineering for his tastes, suggesting that the women governed everything and struck all bargains, which, “coupled with 86 · Kristine K. Forney the natural desire that women have to rule, makes them too imperious and troublesome.” We will see that the spirit of Antwerp’s women was not easily dampened by the admonitions of Vives and Bruto—or even Erasmus, who will be discussed later. Guicciardini’s gender-inclusive remarks about music-making are supported by rich evidence linking Antwerp women with the keyboard instruments...