A RT Y K U Ł Y RE C E N Z Y J N E

gr antley mcdonald
universität wien
orcid 0000-0001-6235-2392
————

How and where did students learn music in the Late

Middle Ages and Renaissance?

abstract Musicologists have traditionally focused on mature musicians working in

musical centres such as courts and cathedrals. However, archives also contain much
information about music in places that were geographically or administratively less cen-
tral. Such places often render valuable information about musical education. The chapters
in the book reviewed here present case-studies in musical education from the late Middle
Ages until the early modern period. Many focus on the city and province of Padua,
while others examine music education in German universities, Parisian parish schools,
and French riding academies.
keywords music education, Middle Ages, Renaissance, early modern period, Padua,
history of education, history of collections, parish schools, academies

abstrakt Jak i gdzie uczniowie uczyli się muzyki w średniowieczu i renesansie? Muzyko-
lodzy tradycyjnie skupiają się na dojrzałych muzykach pracujących w takich ośrodkach
muzycznych jak dwory i katedry. Jednak archiwa zawierają również wiele informacji
o muzyce w miejscach, które pod względem geograficznym lub administracyjnym były
mniej centralne. Z miejsc takich pochodzą często cenne informacje na temat edukacji
muzycznej. Rozdziały w recenzowanej tutaj książce przedstawiają studia przypadków
dotyczące nauczania muzyki od późnego średniowiecza do wczesnej nowożytności. Wie-
le z nich koncentruje się na mieście i prowincji Padwa, podczas gdy inne przedstawiają
edukację muzyczną na niemieckich uniwersytetach, w paryskich szkołach parafialnych
i francuskich akademiach jeździeckich.
słowa kluczowe edukacja muzyczna, średniowiecze, renesans, wczesna nowożyt-
ność, Padwa, historia edukacji, historia kolekcji, szkoły parafialne, akademie

ISBN 0027-5344, e-ISBN 2720-7021 2024/2

© Author, CC BY 4.0, https://doi.org/10.36744/m.2703
138 grantley mcdonald

T he volume under review here1 grew out of several interrelated projects at the
University of Padua and the Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance
(University of Tours). One project at the University of Padua, directed by Antonio
Lovato, ‘Grammar and Singing Schools in the Padua area’, completed in 2022, in-
vestigated musical education in and around Padua until the fall of the Republic
of Venice in 1797. Another, directed by the editor of the volume, Paola Dessì, in-
vestigates what can be learned from the libri amicorum of early-modern students
about their place of music (both vocal and instrumental) in their education, leisure
and communication. These sources reveal many details of students’ interactions with
teachers of practical music and with instrument makers. Another project, at the
Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance in Tours (2013–17), directed by the
late Xavier Bisaro, investigated the place of singing in schools between the sixteenth
and the eighteenth centuries, with particular attention to its religious background,
its repertories and pedagogical techniques.
There is still a lot of room for detailed studies of musical education in the late
Middle Ages and early modern period. Cynthia Cyrus, Susan Forscher Weiss and
Russell E. Murray Jr. made a significant start with their database Musical Instruction
and Musical Learning, but this is complete only to 2006.2 That project led to a significant
essay collection in 2010, Music Education in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.3 The
present volume takes the field forward by another significant step. It is articulated into
four sections: ‘Studium’, ‘Magistri, alumni et scholares’, ‘Schola’, and ‘Workshops
and Academies’. In other words, the book examines musical education in four
distinct settings: in grammar schools, in private education, at universities, and finally
in institutions for education in practical arts. The chapters cumulatively show that
music was encountered often in the late medieval and early modern worlds, and
played a significant part in the instruction of students. Musical knowledge, language,
practices and metaphors were used frequently in many other fields, including
medicine, astronomy, dance and even the equestrian arts.
One significant element of this volume is the focus on music-making in parish
churches, especially in rural areas. Parishes and the music made in them have received
proportionally much less attention than princely chapels or cathedrals. Such neglect
has many causes. The archival documentation for rural churches is generally less
plentiful than for princely chapels, cathedrals or collegiate churches. Rural churches

1 Music in Schools from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age, ed. Paola Dessì, Turnhout: Brepols, 2021
(= Collection ‘Epitome musical’), pp. 336. ISBN-10: 2503598897, ISBN-13: 978-2503598895.
2 MIML: Musical Instruction and Musical Learning, eds. Cynthia J. Cyrus, with Susan Forscher Weiss
and Russell E. Murray Jr., http://miml.library.vanderbilt.edu, accessed 9 May 2006.
3 Music Education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, eds. Russell E. Murray Jr., Susan Forscher
Weiss, and Cynthia J. Cyrus, Bloomington 2010, muse.jhu.edu/book/1693.

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are usually considered less culturally central than larger establishments, partly be-
cause they had less money or other incentives to attract prominent musicians, and
thus tended to be net importers of written (usually printed) musical materials rather
than producers of new material. Furthermore, smaller establishments tended to be
musically less adventurous, or at least cultivated music that was less difficult (and
thus less prestigious) than that created and performed in grand churches. Xavier Bis-
aro shows in his project that while Louis XIV was enjoying the grands motets of Du
Mont and Robert, the music-making in many French parish churches was restricted
to plainchant.4 However, parish clergy were encouraged to make sure that the chant
was done well, with due reverence, and even with an element of congregational par-
ticipation.
Such interest in the music made in institutions lower in the ecclesiastical food-
chain than those customarily studied by musicologists was stimulated by the pub-
lication of Nicholas Temperley’s The Music of the English Parish Church (1983).5 It is
possible that this shift of focus was encouraged by the rise of ‘history from below’,
as represented in the Anglosphere by works such as E. P. Thompson’s The Making of
the English Working Class (1963),6 or in Italy and France by the rise of microhistories
of individual rural communities, such as Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms
(1976) or Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s Carnival in Romans (1979).7 Over the last
couple of decades, ecclesiastical historians have become increasingly interested in
parishes, as witnessed for example by The Parish in Late Medieval England, edited by
Clive Burgess and Eamon Duffy, which includes an important chapter by Magnus
Williamson;8 or, from the German side, Die Pfarrei im Späten Mittelalter, edited by
Enno Bünz and Gerhard Fouquet, and Enno Bünz, Die mittelalterliche Pfarrei.9 The
studies in the volume reviewed here successfully complement such work by histo-
rians, who often neglect to include music as an important element of ecclesiastical
foundations. For example, the volume edited by Bünz and Fouquet, for all its other
strengths, says virtually nothing at all about music.
Of the thirteen contributions in the present volume (including the editorial intro-
duction), eight are in English, and five in Italian. The book is produced handsomely
in large trade paperback, on high-quality paper suitable for the many colour illustra-

4 See Xavier Bisaro, ‘Canto piano e strategie pedagogiche in Adrien Bourdoise’, in: Music in Schools,
pp. 195‒208.
5 Nicholas Temperley, The Music of the English Parish Church, vol. 1, Cambridge 1983.
6 Edward Palmer Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, London 1963.
7 Carlo Ginzburg, Il formaggio e i vermi. Il cosmo di un mugnaio del ’500, Torino 1976; Emmanuel Le Roy
Ladurie, Le carnaval de Romans. De la Chandeleur au Mercredi des cendres 1579‒1580, Paris 1979.
8 Magnus Williamson, ‘Liturgical Music in the Late Medieval English Paris: Organs and Voices, Ways
and Means’, in: The Parish in Late Medieval England, eds. Clive Burgess and Eamon Duffy, Donington
2006, pp. 177‒242.
9 Die Pfarrei im Späten Mittelalter, eds. Enno Bünz and Gerhard Fouquet, Ostfildern 2013; Enno Bünz,
Die mittelalterliche Pfarrei. Ausgewählte Schriften zum 13.–16. Jahrhundert, Tübingen 2017.

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140 grantley mcdonald

tions. It has indices of persons, places and manuscripts. The copy-editing could have
been more careful; some pages had more than one typographical error. Nevertheless,
the book is a valuable collection of very original chapters that illuminate music edu-
cation in many important ways.
Paola Dessì’s introduction (‘Docere and discere: A Multidisciplinary Approach to
Music in Schools’, pp. 9‒19) places the history of musical education into the history
of education more broadly. Here Dessì presents one of the guiding notions of the
collection: that education – including musical education – is a dialectical process of
give and take between teacher and student. The dialectical nature of education was
enshrined in the structure of medieval universities, where students were expected to
react to propositions proposed by the teacher, in active communion with a written
text from an authority, either ancient or modern, in exercises such as quaestiones and
disputations.
Following the introduction, the volume proper begins with brief chapter by
F. Alberto Gallo (‘At School for Governance: Paolino da Venezia and Music’,
pp. 21‒23) about De regimine rectoris, a treatise on government by the Franciscan
Paolino da Venezia, a contemporary of Marchetto da Padova, written in 1313–15.
In Paolino’s opinion, music was an important element in the training of leaders, and
he devoted an entire chapter of his treatise to it.
Paolo Rosso’s chapter (‘La musica nel curriculum delle artes delle università italiane
nel Quattrocento: fra teoria e prassi’, pp. 28‒58) examines the place of music in
the faculties of arts and medicine at universities in the northern half of Italy in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Unfortunately, official records of the teaching of
music at late-medieval universities is quite sparse. The musical literature produced
in the faculties presupposes that students had already received some kind of train-
ing before coming to universities, or perhaps continued to do so in contexts out-
side formal lectures, such as in bursae (colleges). At this time, theorists tended to
treat music either in terms of harmonics (in the tradition of Boethius), or in terms
of its emotional aspect, which led to natural links with humanistic poetic theory.
Of course, these elements were not mutually exclusive. Rosso notes that there was
a transformation of the arts curriculum in Italian universities in the thirteenth centu-
ry, including disciplines such as astronomy and music, which led to the absorption of
the arts curriculum into the medical faculty. (I wonder if this development may have
even longer roots in the growing importance of astronomy/astrology in the work of
scholars associated with the medical school of Salerno, such as Urso of Calabria.)
In late fourteenth-century Paris, the teaching of music was often assigned to one of
the singers from the university, even if they did not hold the title of magister, normal-
ly required for such a task. Musical skill rather than formal qualifications also seemed
to be the deciding feature for music professors in Italy. The formal reorganisation of
the University of Bologna in 1450 included the provision of one chair of music, but

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many of the terms of the reorganisation were disregarded. Around 1482, Bartolomeus
Ramis de Pareia famously lectured on music at Bologna, though our information
about this comes from Ramis’ own writings; there is no trace of his teaching in the
surviving records of the faculties of arts or medicine. The 1409 statutes at Pavia pre-
scribed lectures on Boethius’ De musica. The Pavia statutes were taken as the model
for those at Parma (1415) and Turin (1448), though a later revision of those at Turin
removed the lectureship in music, perhaps because it had proven difficult to guaran-
tee that it could be filled. Rosso notes that the records from Pavia make it difficult to
know if the university ever awarded degrees in music. In contrast with these rather
indecisive data, Rosso moves on to discuss the place of music in academic orations
from the fifteenth century, a topic previously addressed in an article from 1989 by
F. Alberto Gallo. Orations by scholars such as Lapo da Castiglionchio, Filippo Beroal-
do, Giovanni Garzoni and Antonio Codro Urceo mention music in different con-
texts. Garzoni mentions the emotional aspects of music, while Codro recommends
the study of Greek as a means to understand musical terminology better. Piero Cara
(1475) recommends music (like poetry and rhetoric) as a means to influence the
emotions, and for that reason cautions against the kind of music that encourages
base passions. Baldassare Rasini of Pavia still treats music as part of the quadrivium.
Rosso then moves on to discuss the porous borders between the practical instruction
in music at cathedrals and the teaching offered at universities. Prosdocimus recalls
that he studied many music treatises with Luca da Lendinara, cantor at the cathedral
of Padua. Lendinara was succeeded at the cathedral by Ciconia, likewise the author
of musical treatises. Many other authors of treatises worked in major churches, such
as Ugolino da Orvieto, Giovanni Spataro and Franchino Gaffuri. Gaffuri’s primary
position was as choirmaster at the cathedral of Milan. He was appointed professor of
music at Pavia – a task he actually carried out at Milan – as one of his emoluments
as choirmaster at the cathedral of Milan. However, because Gaffuri did not hold the
degree of doctor, his integration into the university structure was limited. Although
the university remained the only institution that had the right to confer degrees, it
was not really even necessary to attain a university degree in music to pursue a career
as a musician. Rosso’s general findings about the limited place of music in Italian
universities are consistent with those presented independently by David A. Lines.10
Inga Mai Groote (‘Transmission and Adaption of Musical Knowledge in
16th-Century German Universities: Professors, Students, and their Books’, pp. 59‒79)
examines the ways in which musical knowledge were adapted and transmitted at
German and Swiss universities in the sixteenth century. Given that the official no-
tices of music are relatively uninformative, Groote looks at other sources, such as

10 David A. Lines, The Dynamics of Learning in Early Modern Italy: Arts and Medicine at the University of
Bologna, Cambridge (MA) 2023.

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the musical texts, both theoretical and practical, owned by students and professors,
and manuscript annotations in these books, where these survive. Since most univer-
sity students came through the Latin schools, many will have already received some
training in singing, to provide music for the liturgy in the churches to which such
schools usually belonged. Until well into the sixteenth century, university instruction
was still based ultimately on Boethius and his medieval commentators, such as Jo-
hannes de Muris. Besides this tradition, there was also a practical tradition based on
the study of plainsong, mensural notation and counterpoint. In some places, scholars
held extra-curricular classes on music, sometimes in their own private houses. Ac-
cording to Groote, such contexts were probably the kinds of places where Reisch’s
Margarita philosophica, Freigius’ Paedagogus, or Glareanus’ Dodecachordon were used.
Given the overlap of material between school and university, it is sometimes diffi-
cult to determine the exact context in which a given book might have been used.
As Groote notes, it is still hard to know exactly what students at German schools or
universities learned, and how this related to their own music-making. To get behind
this, she looks for traces of musical material or instruments in several places. First
are the inventories of students of professors, which usually only become visible to
us at the owner’s death, in post-mortem lists, which indicate that individuals often
retained the music books they had used as students. Groote also looks at annota-
tions in surviving books, the process of collecting works into collector’s volumes
(Sammelbänder), and – where possible – lecture notes, such as those from the classes
of Glareanus. Groote points out that the catalogues of contemporary university
libraries usually contain surprisingly few books on music. The private libraries of
Lutheran pastors, who sometimes rose from the ranks of schoolmasters or cantors,
often contained a couple of musical texts. Groote begins with extant catalogues of
sixteenth-century libraries to assess the identity of music books owned by collectors
and to assess the proportion of musical texts in the overall collection. (This was often
surprisingly low – Erasmus Schreckenfuchs was a notable exception.) Another way
to approach the question would be to start from the traces of ownership in extant
copies, for which the online database Catalogue of Early German Printed Music would
be a good springboard.11 Groote also uses annotations in books as a way to under-
stand student’s reaction to what they were reading or hearing from their teachers.
The Ratsschulbibliothek in Zwickau possesses the books of Stephan and Laurentius
Roth, a significant sixteenth-century collection that reveals much about the practice
of music at the University of Leipzig. The surviving books of Henricus Glareanus
provide perhaps a unique example of what can be learned from annotations in extant
books.

11 vdm Verzeichnis deutscher Musikfrühdrucke / Catalogue of Early German Printed Music,

https://vdm-sbg.eu/, accessed 19 April 2024.

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Paola Dessì’s chapter (‘The Musical Training of University Students in the 16th
Century and the libri amicorum’, pp. 81‒102) examines the musical training of uni-
versity students, drawing information on their libri amicorum, friendship albums
whose inscription was a ritual gesture of intimacy. These yield the data that permit
the creation of a prosopography of music teachers and students. Libri amicorum can
provide all kinds of information relevant to music, such as items of musical iconog-
raphy, or the identities of members of the owner’s networks. The libri amicorum of
students and teachers differ in that the former are generally mobile while the others
are usually fixed in one location. Teachers often entered a snippet of music into the
student’s book, such as a canon to be resolved. Assuming that teachers pitched these
at a level appropriate to the student, these can be considered as some evidence of
the level of proficiency reached. As a case study, Dessì examines the inscriptions in
the album of Veit Seytz, in which she finds both evidence of the Rabelaisian taste of
student literature at this time, and of Seytz’s growing proficiency in music.
Letterio Mauro’s chapter (‘Music between scientia and ars in Giacomo Zabarel-
la’, pp. 105‒111) examines the musical writings of Giacomo Zabarella, professor of
logic and natural philosophy at Padua from 1564 until 1589. Zabarella’s commen-
tary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics (1582) contains extensive comments on music,
which have not yet been studied by musicologists. Zabarella distinguishes four dif-
ferent kinds of music from the theoretical and mathematical to the entirely practical,
devoid of any abstruse learning. Zabarella discussions of music are submitted to
a strictly Aristotelian method that seems rather relentless. Mauro’s dense chapter
requires attentive reading.
Padua was one of the most popular destinations for wealthy students from around
Europe, who wished no simply to learn a profession, but to absorb the rich cultural
life of the city, including education in music. Elda Martellozzo Forin (‘Musica tra le
pareti domestiche a Padova nei secoli XV e XVI: dagli ensemble di docenti universitari
ai singoli strumenti di studenti e commercianti’, pp. 113‒142) examines the archival
traces of musical materials (instruments and notation) supplied for wealthy students
at Padua between about 1450 and 1600 by makers such as the Tieffenbrucker, illus-
trious family of luthiers, and the harpsichord maker Antonio Borghesan. Musical
experiences at Padua could be had in houses, palaces and monasteries. Music teach-
ers followed the example of grammar teachers in opening their own organised music
schools. Students were both local and foreign. Martellozzo Forin also reveals the
enormous enthusiasm for music documented amongst members of the professional
class and other social elites of Padua in the sixteenth century, as revealed by lists of
the instruments and printed music they owned. The lawyer Marco Mantova Bena-
vides owned an organ, several lutes, twelve viols, two harpsichords, seven trombones
(or perhaps dulcians), fifteen flutes and drums. The philosopher Marcantonio Passeri
Genova had eleven lutes, seven viols, a lira da braccio, an organ, and a spinet. Leone

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Lion (d. 1558) had two lutes, seven flutes, four cornetti, a lira and five songbooks.
Pagano da Rio had a separate music room in his house, which contained a spinet,
ten viols, ten rebecs, four ‘fiffari’, six bass flutes (large recorders?), four tenor flutes,
three soprano flutes, three cornemuses, two ‘cornemutti’, a harpsichord, a set of
seven lutes of different sizes, and an enormous music library that included ostensibly
sacred music, such as masses, secular genres such as chansons, as well as specifically
instrumental music, such as Valentin Bakfark’s Harmoniarum musicarum in usum tes-
titudinis factarum (1565). It would have been useful if Martellozzo Forin had engaged
with terminological issues. She does not explain what the term ‘fiffari’ might mean
(shawms or transverse flutes?). She does not go into the puzzling references to ‘sette
tromboni sive fagotti’ or the ‘subioti seu flauti’ in the list of Mantova, even though
she could have referred to the discussions of Gerhard Stradner.12 I am still not sure
if the ‘cornemutti’ are cornetti muti or some kind of cornemuse, but some comment
on this ambiguity would have been warranted. We can be grateful that Martellozzo
Forin transcribes the list of printed music books (and one manuscript) owned by
Pagano Da Rio (d. 1583). However, she does not make any attempt to square this
list against editions or manuscripts that have survived. Such a list (complete with
RISM numbers) might help us to identify where the printed editions came from,
and their chronological spread. (For example, the collection included books as old
as Petrucci’s Canti C of 1504.) Most appear to be Italian editions, but at least one,
Bakfark’s tablature, was printed in Kraków. Does the list contain any editions that
have not survived? Such a list might even lead us to identify surviving copies with
those owned by Da Rio. If so, traces of use might give us some insight into how, and
how intensively, Da Rio used these sources. The presence or absence of traces of use
might reveal the extent to which these substantial collections were actually used, or
whether they were simply status symbols. Furthermore, it would help us to know
what to make of these enormous collections if we knew how many children these
collectors had – a set of seven lutes or ten viols might make sense in a large family,
but would require further explanation in the house of a childless couple – or whether
these collectors were members of any learned or cultural societies that might have
gathered to play music together. In her next section, Martellozzo Forin notes that it
is more difficult to find traces of musical activity in bourgeois families than in very
wealthy ones. She notes that many fifteenth-century inventories of the middling sort
list many precious items but lack any reference to instruments, though some note the
presence of old or broken instruments. Martellozzo Forin also investigates the pres-
ence of players and teachers of singing, instruments and dance at Padua. Information
on musical interest or ability can leave traces in post-mortem inventories. When the

12 Gerhard Stradner, ‘Musical Instruments in an Inventory by Andrea Mantova Benavides, Padua 1696’,
The Galpin Society Journal 55 (2002), pp. 62–103.

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doctor in arts Gregorio Aurelio de Trebis died at Padua in 1473, he left a viola and
a harp. In 1488, Vincenzo Mastellari owned a small organ, perhaps distinct from the
one he gave to the convent of S. Maria in Monteortone. Martellozzo Forin provides
many more scattered references to individuals who owned instruments, most often
lutes, harpsichords, virginals, clavichords, viols or flutes/recorders. These snippets
of information prove difficult to thread into an overarching narrative, but together
add up to provide a rich picture of the keen interest in music-making amongst the
middling sort in Padua. The information presented here represents a wonderfully
rich harvest of archival work that will serve as a valuable source for future research
on the ownership of musical instruments, and complements that recently published
by Bláithín Hurley.13
Donatella Restani (‘Ascolti comparati tra l’Alexandreis di Quilichino e la Trecentes-
ca Istoria di Alessandro Magno di Domenico Scolari’, pp. 143‒168) sifts evidence from
two poems in the late medieval Italian tradition of the Alexander romance: the Latin
Alexandreis by Quilichino da Spoleto, and the Italian Trecentesca Istoria by Domeni-
co Scolari. These poems provide information of the meanings attributed to various
sounds at this time. Descriptions of sound are ever-present in the Alexander legend,
from his own education in music to the performances of musicians in the narrative,
the sound of weapons in battle, the shrilling of trumpets, the cries of prisoners, the
sounds of religious rites. These two reworkings of the Alexander legend include their
own sonic elements. For example, Scolari’s work contains references to sounds that
are intended to express the strangeness of the setting of certain episodes, such as the
description of the song of mechanical birds in the palace of King Porus, or the sound
of the basilisk. There is also some evidence of the creative use (or perhaps misuse) of
technical terms, such as the translation of ‘iocundissimae cantilenae’ as ‘porretti’, that
is, ‘porrectus’, a kind of neume. The chapter includes a seven-page appendix with the
relevant passages from Quilichino and Scolari in parallel columns.
Alessandra Ignesti (‘Music Teaching in Montagnana: Organization, Methods,
and Repertories’, pp. 171‒194) investigates a grammar and singing school at Mon-
tagnana, near Padua, towards the end of the sixteenth century, run by the Magnifi-
ca Comunità, which provided free instruction to all children from the area. Even
though we lack specific documentation about what was taught for the preceding pe-
riod – the church’s archive was destroyed by fire in 1593, and notable gaps are present
even later – we can presume that it was based on the long tradition of the teaching
and learning of chant and techniques of polyphonic improvisation. Inferences can
also be made through comparison with other institutions in the area, which gener-
ally based their practice on that of the cathedral in Padua, as well as from printed

13 Bláithín Hurley, ‘Musical Instruments in the Venetian Home: Contextualizing Marietta Robusti’s Self-
portrait’, Early Music 51 (2023) no. 1, pp. 109–115.

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manuals of plainsong, such as the widely reprinted anonymous Compendium musices,

issued with the approval of Leo X, and the Breviloquium musicale by the Franciscan
Bonaventura da Brescia (later retitled Regula musicae planae), which continue the
tradition of Marchettus of Padua. The Compendium in particular is conservative,
demanding that clerics should perform plainsong in a way that is not ‘relaxed, or
broken, or dissolute, but honest and dignified, and humble overall’. Nevertheless,
such injunctions do not exclude the possibility of simple improvised counterpoint.
Indeed, the fact that even the canons of the cathedral of Modena spontaneously sang
simple counterpoint against the plainchant shows how deeply ingrained this practice
was in musical education. One of the few written records we still have from Montag-
nana is a teaching notebook by Giulio Belli, a choirmaster there in the late sixteenth
century, which draws in part on Zarlino’s rules for counterpoint, including rules of
voice leading, successions of melodic intervals, and simple two-voice counterpoint.
Two pages from the notebook are reproduced in colour. Ignesti also gives interesting
information about the processes of hiring the staff of the school, the choirmaster
and the organist. Even if relatively unimportant towns like Montagnana were not
the most appealing places for ambitious musicians or educators to work, and could
not necessarily offer competitive salaries, the process of vetting candidates remained
quite stringent. Nevertheless, several of the first documented choirmasters departed
before their three-year terms were up, some to enter the service of bishops or car-
dinals. The article also deals with the ways in which the town council tried to deal
with unforeseen changes of staff; the sudden departure of a schoolmaster could have
disastrous consequences on discipline that extended even beyond the school. Ignesti’s
chapter also gives insights into performance practice, adducing evidence that written
polyphony was usually sung at Montagnana with one singer to a part. Moreover,
given the difficulty of finding good boy sopranos, it was preferable to have falsettists
on the top line. However, she also provides evidence that boys were used when no
good adult sopranos could be found. Finally, Ignesti draws on the evidence of a sur-
viving inventory from 1658 to show that the singers at Montagnana performed po-
lyphony in up to eight voices by a range of (exclusively Italian) composers, published
between 1557 and 1653.
Xavier Bisaro’s compact chapter (‘Canto piano e strategie pedagogiche in Adrien
Bourdoise’, pp. 195‒208) deals with manuals for the learning of plainsong in seven-
teenth-century Paris, many written by the parish priests on whom responsibility for
the parish schools lay. He focuses on the work of Adrien Bourdoise, who was involved
in the foundation of a seminary for secular priests at Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet,
inspired by the spirit of Trent. In the absence of a modern critical biography, Bisaro
was constrained to work with a hagiographical account of Bourdoise’s life, published
in 1714, which has to be treated with requisite caution. Bourdoise’s interest in chant
began in childhood and was encouraged when he encountered the Order of the

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Foglianti, whose well-ordered liturgy he admired. His experience in music provided

him with the expertise to teach and offer guidance in liturgical music. Music played
an important role at Saint-Nicholas-du-Chardonnet: the seminarians had lessons
in plainsong for an hour each afternoon, sang in the daily services, and had extra
rehearsals in the evenings. In 1654, one of the priests associated with Bourdoise’s
seminary, Jacques de Batencour, published a manual on education, L’Escole parois-
siale, which emphasises the place of singing – particularly plainchant – in the school
curriculum. In 1669, Batencour issued a substantially revised edition, which reflected
a reform of music teaching at the seminary of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet: hence-
forth, the hexachord system was to be replaced with the ‘methode du Si’, a seven-
-degree scale that dispensed with pesky mutations, in the hope that even the laity
might learn to sing plainsong, which would draw them closer into the bosom of the
church and ennobled their condition. One element that bubbles in the background
of Bisaro’s chapter, but which is never quite spoken aloud, is the constant tension
between what the clergy wanted and the unruly forces of the laity (often in the form
of naughty choirboys) that constantly threatened to wreck their plans. Bantencour
suggested that the choirboys should be penned off in a side chapel or some other
place where they would not disturb the liturgy. Alternatively, where the boys were
only few in number, such as in villages, they could be placed in the choir, where the
combined authority of the parish priest, the choirmaster and the respect for the sac-
rament would keep them in order and might even turn them into good Christians.
This latter suggestion, however appealing, was potentially problematic, since some
stricter clergy of the new style (read: those from Saint-Nicholas-du-Chardonnet)
objected to the presence of the laity in the choir, even choirboys. Such tensions are
also apparent in the choice of literary form of many of the treatises Bisaro discusses:
dialogue and catechism. Dialogue tries to convince through literary attractiveness,
while catechism is by its nature a more coercive form. The alternation between wheedling
and compulsion on the part of the clergy is even present in the title of some of the
textbooks discussed by Bisaro, such as the Methode facile et assurée pour aprendre le
plein-chant (1670), whose name embodies the clergy’s attempts to convince the laity
of the ease and the benefits of learning the ancient music of the church. Bisaro’s
chapter also reminds us that plainchant remained a vital backbone of musical practice
in French parish churches, even the most ecclesiologically progressive ones.
Dilva Princivalli’s chapter (‘Don Paolo Galliero e la scuola di grammatica e musica
di Tribano (Padova)’, pp. 209‒227) examines the work of Paolo Galliero (1550–1627),
the archpriest of San Martino in Tribano (Padua), who founded a free school in 1618
through a testamentary bequest, inspired by the reforms of Trent and the example of
Carlo Borromeo. Galliero had lived in Borromeo’s household at Milan and received
priestly ordination at his hands. The school’s curriculum was based on that of the
Jesuits, and leaned heavily on Vergil, Cicero and the Roman Catechism, remarkable

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provisions in this very poor area of the countryside, where illiteracy was widespread.
The school also offered instruction in singing and organ playing. To support the
teaching at the school, Galliero founded a chaplaincy at the altar of St Charles in the
parish church to fund the teaching of grammar and music. The incumbents received
accommodation and emoluments in money and kind. The foundation charter spec-
ifies the skills that the organist was supposed to possess. The detail that he should be
able to ‘cantare e sonare bene ogni cantillena et rispondere in tutto al choro’ refers
to the ability to improvise versets on the chant, in alternation with the schola. Gal-
liero also suggested that the organist should teach his students to play ‘la corrente
francese’, which Princivalli associates with Banchieri’s suggestion that organ students
should imitate canzoni alla francesca. There is written evidence from 1677/78 that the
teachers were diligent in teaching students to play the spinet and in ‘cantar la parte’
(sight reading?). In order to be considered for the positions of grammar teacher or
organist, candidates had to submit to an examination by the masters of seminary
and Scuola Maggiore of Padua, while potential organists were to submit to exami-
nation by the organist of the cathedral of Padua. The organists were expected to be
able to intone a chant, whether singing or accompanying themselves on the organ;
to improvise a polyphonic version of the chant; to accompany the choir; and to re-
spond to it. In each case, the candidates were expected to pay 1 scudo to each of their
examiners. Such regulations reflect the post-Tridentine insistence that those holding
such positions should be properly qualified. To encourage the integration of teacher
and organist into the community, Galliero suggested that it was preferable to employ
local candidates wherever possible. This foundation survived until the fall of the Re-
public of Venice. During the Napoleonic period, it was renamed the Congregation
of Charity, and it suffered further restructuring under the subsequent regimes. The
school was finally closed in 1926, though Galliero’s memory as patron of education
remains alive in the town.
Although Leon Battista Alberti and Lorenzo Ghiberti wished that painters should
learn all the liberal arts, they failed to mention music amongst them. Likewise, de-
pictions of the artistic Academy of Baccio Bandinelli lack references to music. How-
ever, skill in music was clearly a desirable social skill, as we learn from Castiglione
and Bembo. Accordingly, Alessandra Pattanaro (‘Si dilettò in giovanezza della scherma
e di sonare il liuto. Painters-Musicians in Giorgio Vasari’s Lives’, pp. 231‒256) inves-
tigates whether artists learned anything of music within or outside the studio; and
if so, whether they drew on their knowledge of music when depicting musicians or
instruments in paintings or drawings, especially when these were commissioned by
clients or patrons with a particular interest in music. She finds that artists (such as
Raphael) who worked at courts had to acquire the skills prized there, namely elo-
quence and erudition. Pattanaro uses several approaches in her investigation. She
examines sketches of musicians, especially the stance and hands of instrumentalists,

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often made in preparation for finished works. Examples of these are extant from
Dürer and Raphael. Pattanaro also examines the transformation of such elements in
the progress from study to finished work. Further evidence for the musical education
of individual artists is supplied by literary works such as Vasari’s Lives. Vasari’s own
comments on depictions of musicians, such as his description of Fra Bartolomeo’s
Mystic Marriage of St Catherine, reveal a considerable knowledge of (or at least a sen-
sitivity to) music. Vasari’s biographies also contain evidence of competing priorities:
for example, the painter Girolamo da Carpi was prevented from realising his poten-
tial as a painter by his excessive love of lute playing.
Gavina Cherchi (‘La musica è diletta al cavallo. Musical Paradigms in Equestrian
Academies of the Renaissance’, pp. 257‒305) investigates the place of music within
riding schools in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The study of horseman-
ship had begun as a practical skill, mastered by breeders, riders and blacksmiths.
By the mid sixteenth century, equestrian training was not simply a pragmatic prepa-
ration for war or hunting. Riding schools also embraced instruction in fencing, mar-
tial arts, also philosophy, astronomy, dialectic, rhetoric, history, foreign languages,
arithmetic and music. Theorists invested riding with a philosophical overlay: the
unity of the horse and rider was described in terms of Pythagorean harmony, and
riders were supposed to learn music to help them apprehend harmony, goodness
and beauty. Riding also functioned as political training: learning to control a horse
prepared a young ruler to control those he governed. The four legs of the horse were
compared to the four strings of an instrument, which the player must learn to mas-
ter. However, one important question that Cherchi avoids is how much such studies
were pursued as ends in themselves (why would someone go to a riding school to
learn astronomy after all?), and how much they were simply intended to add to the
superficial polish of the education of the gentleman or aristocrat (the kinds of people
who could afford to ride and maintain a horse), training him in the social skills that
would help him make a good impression at court? How much was this about real
erudition, and how much about the display of elegance, a metastasis of Castiglione’s
courtly manners? What do the references to antiquity in hippological literature actu-
ally bring to the discussion? To what extent are they just typical Renaissance/Baroque
window dressing? Do they reflect the anxiety of practitioners of the ‘mechanical arts’
that they would not be taken seriously unless they could show some classical polish?
Some engagement with Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas of cultural capital and habitus could
have brought this argument further.
The book thus has much to offer. Its broad chronological canvas will make it
appealing to a range of readers. However, I would have liked to see more sustained
attention to the nuts-and-bolts technique of teaching music to children and youths
from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century, and how this might resemble or
differ from our own practices. Did teachers demonstrate a vocal or instrumental

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technique and then have the students repeat it until they got it right? What technical
exercises did students have to master? Which textbooks could teachers and students
consult to find such exercises, and where could they buy them, especially outside
large cities? Did the burgeoning literature of instructional manuals make individ-
ual study possible in a way that would have been unthinkable before the sixteenth
century, or were such books used in the context of traditional lessons, with a teacher
and a student in the same room? Were singing and instrumental lessons conducted
one-on-one, or in groups? What was the place of solo vs. ensemble instruction?
Did the students work on pieces of graded levels of difficulty to master technique
and expression? Were their abilities tested at regular intervals? What was the role of
sight-reading, memory and improvisation? Could students who could not afford to
buy instruments hire or borrow them? Where from? How much did students re-
hearse? Some of these issues, so basic to what we consider self-explanatory elements
in the teaching and learning of music, are touched upon briefly in some of the chap-
ters. Of course, this is in part a function of the surviving material, and the questions
pursued by the individual authors of the chapters in this book. Yet it still remains for
future researchers to investigate such questions in a persistent way.

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Grantley McDonald is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna, where he works

on music at the court of Maximilian I Habsburg. His research focuses on learned culture in the
Renaissance, especially the links between musical thought, theology, philosophy and medicine.
His PhD dissertation in musicology (University of Melbourne) focused on the German reception
of the musical thought of Marsilio Ficino. His PhD dissertation in history (Leiden) was a study
of the political and cultural implications of the New Testament edition of Erasmus of Rotterdam.
He has been one of the editors of Verzeichnis deutscher Musikfrühdrucke (www.vdm16.sbg.ac.at)
since its inception in 2012.
[email protected]

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