Comments on
6.16 Teaching Music Theory and Practice
For the importance of illustration in music textbooks, see now: Susan Forscher Weiss,”Vandals, Students, or Scholars? Handwritten Clues in Renaissance Music Textbooks,” in Music Education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Indiana University Press, 2010, pp.207-246, esp. 208-214.
An important new collection of essays on music teaching is Music Education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. by Russell E. Murray, Susan F. Weiss, and Cynthia J. Cyrus, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 2010.
Good question! I don’t know. Often such woodcut initials have a subject that has a name starting with the initial in question. But I do not know an historical or mythical figure that fits this picture of a man gripping an animal. In any case, it is likely a stock cut, not one made to go with this humble guide to singing chant.
What’s represented in the woodcut at the top left of the image? Does it have a relationship to the text?