The Place of Music in German Education Around 1600

Abstract

1HE IDEA HANDED DOWN from Plato to the Renaissance that music was one of the best pedagogical disciplines, an ornament for learned men, and above all, a means to help youth serve school, church, and soaety, found wide practical application in the life of the school, in the active participation of the pupils in the church services, and in the task of providing music to the community on various kinds of festive occasions.l In addition, music was interrelated with the other subjects in various ways: with mathematics through the theoretical foundations of intervals and mensuration, with Latin through the language used in musical instruction, especially in the memorization of music rules in Latin with Greek quotations interspersed and through the majority of the texts set to music, with religion and philosophy through the subject matter of sacred music, the discussion of the origins and objectives of music, and the singing of sententiae, proverbs of moral content.2 Sannemann has shown the place of music in the quadrivium. In order to complete the picture, the interrelation of music with the whole program was added in brackets to his tabular summation. The resulting diagram demonstrates that music was indeed the element that bound the whole curriculum together:3 Sacra Doctrina