Teaching Medieval Music Today: New Approaches to Paleography and Music History

Besides a tendency to abstractness, inherent in the technical nature of the subject itself, a common problem in the teaching of medieval music history is how to awaken the interest of learners in matters that are so far back in time as to have nothing in common with modern sensibility. Referring to the introduction of the staff by Guido of Arezzo in the 11th century, the article tries to explain how, by aptly combining chronologically organized descriptions of facts with a basic study of documents (that is, by adopting the rudiments of the research methods used by expert historians), students can be encouraged to reconstruct history with a strict method. This approach also sheds light on the reasons why men and women of the past adopted certain innovations or kept certain traditions alive.