Musical practice and idleness: a moral controversy in Renaissance Spain

Abstract

making secular music. St. ]erome appears to be turning away six beautiful girls playing instruments. The painting reminds us of the traditional theme of 'Sacred and Secular Love'. However here Sacred Love is semi-nude, and Secular Love is richly dressed, exactly the opposite way round from how the theme is usually painted. Although the clothes and musical instruments of the women are from the 17th century, apparently the canvas does not attempt to describe any real or contemporary scene. But, in the age and the land of painters like Velazquez, Murillo, or Ribera, we cannot overlook the fact that the only painting with no nun women musicians depicts them as sinning. Images of prostitution, lasciviousness or idleness with music are common in Medievat and Modern times all over Europe. But in Italy, Qermany, The Low Countries or France women appear making music at home, at court or in the streets without any dishonest connotation. Images of noble men making music are common neither in 16th nor in 17th century Spain, not even in the printed books of music for vihuela, the instrument widespread in learned circles. Hispanic moral and educational treatises of the time help us to explain the place of music in Spanish culture. According to these books, in Spain, music as theoreti cal speculation or a branch of mathematics was considered a respectable and masculine science. As long as secular practical music was entertainment it was considered honest by most masculine education commentators and immodest by most of those who wrote on female education. Dancing was popularly considered a lowbrow female activity.1 These statements may be a surprise if we associate, as we usually do, Spanish Renaissance with the Italian one, and particularly, with the musical background depicted in II Cortegiano

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