ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the sixteenth century a change in where, how, and to whom music was taught took place in German lands. The Protestant Reformation was in large part responsible for that change. The large numbers of practical music books in German-speaking lands speaks to the emphasis placed on choral singing and the need for music instruction in the schools. The Germans were interested in teaching practical elements of music, and as such, the surviving books reveal the interest in pedagogy rather than in theory. The books were compiled in German towns with large merchant populations interested in culture and humanism, and their contents reveal more about the tastes of what the middle class might enjoy singing or playing at home; they were probably not meant for school use. Germans became more and more interested in the practical aspects of music and in the education of children and musical amateurs throughout the sixteenth century cannot be denied.
