Music in Schools from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age

The contributors to this project — musicologists, historians, philosophers, art historians, and historians of philosophy — have been invited to participate in a multidisciplinary dialogue with respect to the position music has occupied in instructional and educational systems from medieval to modern times. Their essays are indicative of diverse disciplinary perspectives towards the subject and feature an array of innovative interpretations.
On the whole, they neither claim the supremacy of music in the context of the various educational systems, nor do they focus on the artistic musical production that emerged as a consequence of the various educational approaches. Rather, this volume sketches the circulation and dissemination of ideas, images, and people, all related to the different paths and pedagogical practices that have characterised the teaching and learning of music in different locales and across history.
It ultimately underscores the strategic role that music occupied within educational systems of all levels vis-à-vis other disciplines and, thus, it contributes to a better understanding of the role music education played in the formation of an educated citizenry — from children to adults, from "practicus" to "theoricus", from men of arms to religious men, from the literate to politicians — bearing in mind the Isidorian definition that "musica ad omnia se extendit" (Etymologiae III, 17, 1).