Music Education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

1 Some Introductory Remarks on Musical Pedagogy

1 SomeIntroductoryRemarks onMusicalPedagogy• James Haar • It is a privilege and a pleasure to be asked to open a volume such as this; so I thought when I was invited to write this piece, and so I still think. But when I sat down to begin writing these remarks I realized, after some stale and unprofitable early attempts, that it might be something of a chore as well. Even before looking at the range of subject matter in the titles of this volume, I recognized that musical pedagogy is a large and varied field and that the Early Modern period with its mix of medieval and classicizing elements—a mixture so markedly characteristic of the musical arts—is not short and compact but long and untidy. How to begin a discussion of what suddenly seemed so big and unwieldy a subject? Several issues were paramount: terminology, in particular the word “pedagogy,” and location and time frame. For a specific location I chose to concentrate on Italy (aware that other chapters are focused on musical education not only in Italy, but also in Germany, Spain, England, and the Low Countries). For the former, I turned to trusted sources of etymology, such as Greek, Latin, and English dictionaries. From the classical sources I learned that a pedagogue was, in ancient times, a person (often a male slave) charged with the education and governance of children, chiefly boys.1 Ignoring the gender warning flags (for I knew that the education of women would fig- 4 · James Haar ure prominently in this volume), I went on to the Oxford English Dictionary, which added that a pedagogue is “a schoolmaster, teacher, preceptor (now usually hostile, with implication of pedantry, dogmatism, or severity).”2 The noun pedagogy is, according to the same source, associated with introductory training. As for music, to the ancients the word indicated lyric poetry and its setting in song. I like this not just because the word music is Greek in origin, nor even because the classical tradition was important in Renaissance pedagogy , but rather for the word’s relation to the Muses, to Apollonian elements in art, and ultimately to the concept of the liberal arts within which music was included. There are of course many ways to define music.3 For this term as well as for pedagogy we need not restrict ourselves to what the ancients, or even the august editors of the OED, thought. I will try to avoid suggestions of hierarchical ranking: flute lessons, the sociological background of hip hop, and the theoretical substratum of Ars Nova polyphony are all valid elements in musical pedagogy. What I will take from the dictionary definitions is a recognition of the importance of providing an education in music to children—which is where I will begin my remarks—as well as the validity of considering music as a science and a liberal art, however much various cultures including our own have, with reason, stressed the primacy of musical performance. Training in instrumental performance was, throughout the period of our concern here, mostly an individual practice, often a father-son relationship that resembled guild apprenticeship. We know of many instances of the success of this instruction, as well as occasional examples—that of Benvenuto Cellini is a famous one—of the resentment it caused.4 Playing “genteel” instruments , especially keyboards and the lute, was an instruction-aided goal for aristocratic amateurs in what was otherwise a professional and definitely a non-aristocratic calling. Not all or even many children were taught to play an instrument. By comparison, a much larger number learned to sing; it is not too much to say that instruction of the young in music centered on singing. What did this consist of? Fillipo Villani tells us that Francesco Landini, the greatest musician of late fourteenth-century Florence, who was blind from early childhood, decantare pueriliter capit, that is, began as a child to “repeat in singing,” doubtless meaning that he learned to sing by repeating what his teacher sang to him, perhaps simple songs but also melodic formulas such as psalm tones.5 Not only the blind boy Landini but probably most children began to sing before Figure 1.1. Bonaventura da Brescia, Breviloquium musicale (Brescia, 1497), sig. Aiii verso (Bologna, Museo Internazionale, A 57). 6 · James Haar they learned to read—imitating adult song in general, but under a teacher learning the elements of trained...