Education: Music among the Challenges of Early Modernity

This chapter focuses on three crucial challenges that European education faced in the period 1450–1650, and assesses the role music played in those contexts: the fundamental change of paradigm from the prevalence of scholasticism to the emergence and propagation of humanism; the drive towards universalization, after geographic discoveries expanded horizons and the Reformation engendered confessional competition; and the redefinition of individual and community identities under the pressure of momentous social and religious transformation. The three corresponding sections will be complemented by another dedicated to the education of music professionals. Certain topics will recur at different moments. For instance, the Society of Jesus, as one of the most formidable powerhouses in early modern education, looms almost everywhere, here for its comprehensive pedagogy and its own approach to the invention of professional music schools, there for its massive use of songs in the spread of Christian doctrine, and again for its influence on élites through colleges for nobles. The education offered by chapel master Franchino Gaffurio (Franchinus Gaffurius, 1451–1522) to his pupils at Milan Cathedral, discussed in the first section, followed the general curriculum and master-apprentice model described in the second. A thread links the discussion of Venetian ospedali with the broader reflection on women’s access to musical education. And issues of mobility link the discussion of musicians and music students in the second section with the investigation of missionaries and teaching methods in the third.