Music Education in the

New World

Aztec, Inca and Maya Music

Music was dependent on religious and cult observances

A professionalized caste controlled public musical life

Extremely rigid training for a profession in music was required

Errors (believed to be offensive to gods) were punishable by death

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Music for the Aztecs was solely for religious purposes.

Philosophers were denied entrance into the spiritual centers until “song received its rules, drums were fashioned and music sounded, then only did life begin to stir in those cities”

Musicians (long before friars arrived) were already in the habit of calling the city to prayers at stated intervals

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Early Music Education with the Aztecs

Pedro de Gante Arrived in 1523 Within a year he opened a

school for the sons of native chiefs in Tezcoco

Here, de Gante taught reading, writing, singing, playing instruments, copying musical manuscripts and constructing instruments

100 years before colonization started, de Gante’s students were singing European music, copying Franco-Flemish polyphony, playing and building violins and organs and composing and teaching music in the European style

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By 1536, a university had been established in Mexico

1539, a printing press was set up

1556, Ordinary of the Mass was printed, the first printed book in America and followed by eleven other liturgical books

Only fourteen liturgical books with music were printed in Spain during the same period

1630, there were Spanish friars serving 25 missions and 60,000 Indians

Each mission had a school similar to the one established by Pedro de Gante

New Mexico missions were destroyed in the 1680’s, but the Spanish continued to establish schools in Texas, New Orleans and California

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Music was the principal subject in these schools

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Incas

Earliest Americans in 1350 (in what is now Peru) to institute any formal schemes of musical training

Singers and drummers entertained Inca captains and nobility

Music education was taught to children of the royal family and the nobles of the empire

Taught by rote and by actual participation The four year course of study culminated in oral

examinations that tested the students knowledge of wars, conquests and sacrifices as celebrated in song

Young women between 9 and15 were placed in nunneries where they were trained in singing and flute playing

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Instruments of the Indigenous People

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…more instruments…

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Influences from the Old World

Germany

– Hildegard of Bingen 1098-1179

Monophonic-music conduit for the voice of God

Oh Greenest Branch

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France

– Leonin and

Perotin 1160-1200

Polyphony-

sacred songs

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Vatican City

– Giovanni Palestrina 1525-1594

– Sacred polophony for four, five or six voices

– Came to be called “savior of church music”

– Friars took his music to the New World

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More influences…

Switzerland

–16th century

–Mennonites brought with them a Hymn Book and opened a school

And…

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The mainstream of American music education emerged from the British settlements in New England

The English colonists arrived in 1620 and 1630 seeking religious freedom

The two largest denominations resulting from the restoration was the involvement of the congregation in singing spiritual songs

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