ABSTRACT
Jessie Ann Owens, in her book Composers at Work: The Craft of Musical Composition 1450-1600, mentions that the subject of musical education is one that is badly in need of more investigation.1 Although a number of younger musicologists are working in the area of music education in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, examining such topics as musical institutions, didactic sources, and compositional practice, at the present time, there does not exist a comprehensive scholarly source on the subject. There have even been two symposia, both coincidentally held in 1987 in Europe, on various topics relating to music education in the medieval era and in the Renaissance. One of these was the opening round table of the 14th Congress of the International Musicological Society in Bologna. A veritable cornucopia of topics was addressed, ranging from music curriculum to treatises to what was being taught within and outside the university and also in the surrounding schools, in the dance halls, in private lessons, and with or without manuals or texts. The question asked by Craig Wright, the session chair, was whether the bulk of those treatises were actual texts of lectures given within the universities. The obvious follow-up to that would be a question about the innumerable other books of musical learning that appeared following the advent of printing, everything from children's primers to manuals for amateurs on how to sing, compose, and play a variety of musical instruments. It is one matter to know whether and what materials were used in musical instruction and yet another to know what actually went on in music lessons. We also need to determine where the lessons took place: in the classroom, on a one-to-one basis, within or outside of a school or institution. Beyond that, we must
1 Jessie Ann Owens, Composers at Work: The Craft of Musical Composition 1450-
1600 (New York, 1997), p. 12, n. 2 and 3. She cites a number of contributions to the field of music instruction and education including works by Nan Cooke Carpenter, Richard Rastall, Thomas D. Culley, Jeremy Yudkin, Bemarr Rainbow, K. W. Niemoller, Jos Smits van Waesberghe, Craig Wright, Kristine Forney, John Kmetz, John Butt, Jane Flynn, and Edith Weber. In 1998, a number of colleagues and I formed a consortium that meets annually to further the cause of historical musical pedagogy and literacy. In August 2002, we presented our most recent findings and the latest research in the field at the 17th Congress of the International Musicological Society in Louvain.
