ABSTRACT
So where does this leave the aristocratic practitioner a Ia Castiglione who had emerged aronnd the tum of the sixteenth century, whose accomplishments were now professionalized and usurped by a group of specialists? The answer to this question is not simple; early modern French people fonnd themselves divided on just this point. Thomas Pelletier, writing in 1604 on the topic of noble education, explains:
Lute playing is counted among the skills that a gentleman should learn. And there are some fathers who believe that their sons have learned nothing of worth if they have not acquired that accomplishment. There are others who, on the contrary, do not think it so necessary or honorable that they would wish their child to spend half the time necessary to gain even a passable abihty on the instrument ... If it is rejoindered that the lute makes them seen and honored in company, I hold that on the contrary it rather makes them scorned, because a gentleman of a truly good family should take pleasure from others without serving to give them pleasure himself. 17
Clearly the stigma attached to the figure of the performing musician had persisted despite the gains in status that particular kinds of musical activity had made over the previous hnndred years. A better tide for this study thus may be »Minstrel and Courtier«: for by the end of sixteenth century the chamber musicians of the French royal household combined elements of both of these figures, joined in a new type of royal servant whose activities were integral to the functioning of the early modern court.
