The editors and authors of this volume have put together an important collection of essays on the multifaceted history of the teaching and learning of music in the medieval and early modern periods. The collection is notable not only for its musicological quality, but also--and perhaps more importantly- -for the conscious effort that has been made to reconnect musical pedagogy with its social, cultural and intellectual contexts.
The essays in the volume are arranged in five thematic groups and interspersed with three "perspectives" (written by James Haar, Anthony Grafton and Jesse Ann Owens respectively). These perspectives manage successfully to contextualize the highly focused scholarship of the rest of the volume. My mention of highly focused scholarship is in no way intended as a criticism, for each of the authors has done a commendable job of using detailed case studies to illustrate broader themes.
James Haar's opening perspective ("Some Introductory Remarks on Musical Pedagogy") is followed by the three essays that comprise Part 1 ("Medieval Pedagogy"). Delores Pesce ("Guido d'Arezzo, Ut queant laxis, and Musical Understanding") examines Guido of Arezzo's concept of what it means to understand music by discussing his injunction that the singer keep in mind the property (proprietas) of the pitches he sings and pointing out that Guido was not as "anti-intellectual" as he is sometimes made out to be. By focusing on the meanings of the terms sensus and proprietas, she argues that Guido advocated a type of musical understanding that combined intellect and sense (in its corporeal form). Charles Atkinson ("Some Thoughts on Music Pedagogy in the Carolingian Era") takes as his starting point the educational reforms of Charles the Great and Alcuin, and from there undertakes a case study based on three Carolingian glosses to Martianus Capella and Boethius. What is notable is that, like Pesce, he treats textual evidence historically, displaying sensitivity to its grammatical nuances and firmly connecting music with the other artes. The historical approach of Pesce and Atkinson is carried further by Susan Boynton ("Medieval Musical Education as Seen through Sources Outside the Realm of Music Theory"), who points to monastic customaries and glossed hymns as a rich and relatively untapped source of information on such things as teaching schedules and pedagogical methods.
Part 2 ("Renaissance Places of Learning") acknowledges the importance of institutional context for music education. Thus Gordon Munro ("'Song Schwylls' and 'Music Schools': Music Education in Scotland, 1560-1650") charts the effects of the Scottish reformation on the institutions of musical education. He shows that although the abolition of the Latin liturgy sounded the death- knell for Scottish song schools (that is choir schools), the period witnessed the birth of the new music schools in their stead--schools that focused on a more bourgeois type of music education. Kristine Forney ("A Proper Musical Education for Antwerp's Women") reconstructs the type of musical education available to the daughters of the Antwerp burgher and merchant classes through a skilful survey of iconographic and documentary evidence, demonstrating that that education encompassed both religious and secular elements. Unfortunately, the following article--John Griffiths' "Juan Bermudo, Self-instruction, and the Amateur Instrumentalist"--fits less well in this category than the previous two. It is hard to see its connexion with "place" since Griffiths uses Juan Bermudo's 1555 music treatise entitled Declaracion de instrumentos musicales to show how the pedagogy of instrumental music was modelled on the principles of vocal music. The effect of this is somewhat compounded by the contents of Part 4 ("Music Education in the Convent"), which again covers institutional context. The two articles in this section deal respectively with the implementation of the Tridentine reforms on the abbey of Nonnberg in Salzburg (Cynthia J. Cyrus, "The Educational Practices of Benedictine Nuns: A Salzburg Abbey Case Study") and the musicianship and pedagogical practice of nuns in Iberian convents (Colleen Baade, "Nun Musicians as Teachers and Students in Early Modern Spain"), and thus seem to fit better with the theme of "places of learning". This is not to criticize the quality of Griffith's work, merely to suggest that it would have been better placed elsewhere in the volume.
Anthony Grafton's survey of the importance of the commonplace genre to Renaissance education (Perspective 2: "The Humanists and the Commonplace Book: Education in Practice") sets the scene for Part 3 ("Renaissance Materials and Contexts"). Peter Schubert's "Musical Commonplaces in the Renaissance" builds directly on Grafton's perspective by applying the principle of the commonplace book to musical composition, especially Francisco de Montanos' Arte de musica teorica y pratica (1592) and Pedro Cerone's El melopeo y maestro (1613). He is followed by Pamela Starr ("Music Education and the Conduct of Life in Early Modern England: a Review of the Sources"), who concentrates on the light shed on music's role by conduct manuals, and Susan Forscher Weiss, ("Vandals, Students, or Scholars? Handwritten Clues in Renaissance Music Textbooks"), who examines handwritten marginalia and annotations in printed music treatises. Like Boynton she sees glosses as important evidence for our attempts to understand the didactic implications of the text.
The final section of the book is devoted to teachers (Part 5: The teacher). Blake Wilson ("Isaac the Teacher: Pedagogy and Literacy in Florence, ca. 1488") studies the acquisition of contrapuntal proficiency in late fifteenth-century Florence, showing that young Florentines pursued strategies ranging from emulating the works of the Flemish polyphonic masters to what he terms "apprenticeship" (298). In the latter instance the renowned Flemish composer Heinrich Isaac played a leading role by holding what amounted to contrapuntal workshops for groups of eager students. Russell E. Murray, Jr. ("Zacconi as Teacher: A Pedagogical Style in Words and Deeds") argues that among early- modern music treatises Zacconi's Prattica di musica is perhaps the most reflective of actual pedagogical practice; he sees it as being suffused by a performance-oriented approach to teaching counterpoint. Gary Towne ("The Good Maestro: Pietro Cerone on the Pedagogical Relationship") returns to Cerone's El melopeo y maestro to examine what it says of different types of teachers and of pedagogical effectiveness.
The volume closes with the third and final perspective by Jessie Ann Owens ("You Can Tell a Book By Its Cover: Reflections on Format in English Music 'Theory'"). Examining printed books, Owens argues for the importance of format (size) in determining audience: whereas small books were "destined to be inexpensive tools for student or amateur instruction" (377), larger formats were designed for a more elite audience. While this conclusion is not in itself startlingly new--it is well known to medieval palaeographers and codicologists- -it is, nevertheless, new in the context of music treatises and yet again demonstrates the advantages of bringing historical methodologies to the study of the music of the past. It is perhaps worth pointing out that in some respects early printing does not represent a great break with the norms of manuscript production and that knowledge of manuscript practice can sometimes be used to inform our approach to printed material.
Two general points should be made about this collection, the first critical and the second complimentary. The title Music Education in the Middle Ages and Renaissance is misleading since of the seventeen items only three pertain to the Middle Ages. If it was the intention of the editors to bridge the gap between the periodizations of "medieval" and "renaissance" (which owe much to the outmoded constructs of some nineteenth-century historians), then that laudable aim has, unfortunately, been unsuccessful. As the book is clearly one dominated by early-modern material might not a slightly different title have been more helpful?
On the other hand, the most noticeable feature of this collection is that its essays show substantive engagement with the historical contexts of their musical sources. Many of the articles are based upon meticulous archival or documentary research (those by Munro, Forney, Cyrus, Forscher Weiss and Owens, for example), while others benefit from sensitive textual analysis (such as those of Pesce, Atkinson and Boynton). While there are points of detail and emphasis that specialists will question, the volume as a whole represents a worthy attempt to treat musical pedagogy in an historical manner and thus should be of interest not only to musicologists but also to historians. For pursuing such a contextual approach to music pedagogy the authors and editors are to be congratulated.