Back to scholasticism

Now that it is September I feel as though some solemnity is required. The start of the school year will forever imbue this month with scholasticism. For as long as I have revelled in the mild climate of San Diego, my gut always wants to feel the weather turn. Alas.

We use the term “scholastic” in a typical bastardized American fashion. Perhaps that’s a bit harsh since scholasticism in its original form has all but died out. Maybe I should give up rolling my eyes when I hear about the scholastic achievements of fifth-graders.

The scholastic method is a far cry from what happens in our schools now. The instructor would pick an important text, everyone would read it thoroughly, and then opposing views on the content of the text would be argued into a unity.

This dialectic approach sought not a winner of an argument but a merging of viewpoints, opinions, and opposing ideas. The dialectic was the foundation of scholasticism. We can hear it in the music of the scholastic period — roughly 1000–1700 B.C.E.

The music of Tomás Luis de Victoria has always resonated with me. His music comes from the pinnacle of late scholasticism, which was the last of the 16th the early 17th centuries.

We can hear the dialectic in the polyphony of his music. Opposing lines work against each other, prodding each other, and coming together.

Whenever anyone asks me for a recommendation for study music I always go with Victoria. It sounds like scholarly pursuits. It is drenched in 500 years of unbroken dialectic tradition.

Victoria’s music is the finest that scholasticism has to offer. It comes to us free of the politics of the anti-reformation movement of which Victoria, a priest himself, was a part.

The politics are so far removed in history that now we get the purity of spiritual and academic pursuit without the context of the era. Sometimes a lack of context is beautiful and liberating.