ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the role music played in the curriculum at Saint-Cyr and explores how it may have been taught. The Maison was first and foremost a place of learning, dedicated to raising and educating a specific class of girls to prepare them to take their place within a socially regimented society. The goal of education at the Maison was to create hardworking, simple, frugal mothers of noble families, who would be useful to the state and capable of managing their family's estate and fortune. While the Maison's basic educational goals were not fundamentally different from general contemporary ideas about the education of girls, they were carried out through Maintenon's remarkable system of instruction, which emphasized cooperation and emulation. The Maison's official Memoires document a shift in the focus of music education that occurred sometime after Maintenon's death. General music instruction was in the hands of ladies and girls who had some background in music.
