A Synthesis Between Musica and Cantus

An Analysis of the Systematization of Music and Music Education in the Middle Ages

Abstract

This article examines the Middle Ages as a key for the systematization of musical practice and its educational processes; more precisely, as a period in which an ontological leap occurs in the development of the processes of production and reproduction of the social practice of music in the West. Based on the theoretical-methodological frame of historical-dialectical materialism, we will explore works in the fields of musicology, philosophy and education, covering historical developments in the thought and pedagogy of music in the transition between classical antiquity and the medieval period, with the aim of capturing the ontological determinants of this development process, specifically its particular manifestation in the synthesis between the Greco-Roman philosophical-speculative tradition (musica) and musical practice (cantus). Examination of this synthesis provides us with support for understanding the nature and function of music in our society, especially in relation to its presence in school education.