ABSTRACT
If musicians are frequently considered suspect characters and music-making in history has sometimes been frowned upon by society, especially religious society, there is no doubt that as an intellectual endeavor music has enjoyed great prestige. It is possible that without theory Giorgio Vasari might not have considered his colleagues worthy of a book although their high visibility must have caused them to be of great interest to the general public. Vasari’s ideal is Greek antiquity and the spirit of this antiquity that was being revived in the thirteenth century, though Vasari skipped over all the dark centuries in between. There is of course an inherent difference between art and music, namely, that art endures while music exists only when it sounds. In places such as Ferrara, music was essentially private. It took place for the most part at court and in private chapels.
