The musical training of university students in the 16th century and the libri amicorum

In the sixteenth century, the peregrinatio academica of students to foreign universities was part of the educational strategy of the European elites. To complete their university education, the students often attended schools of music masters present in university cities, as well as the workshops of musical instrument makers, especially luthiers. Therefore, reconstruction of the musical training of these students involved the first census of this student population and their music masters and music artisans within the broader history of the culture and educational strategy of the time. The aim was to create a prosopography of music masters, understood not as eminent artists but as educators of young men, and a prosopography of students who included music within their university education as extra-curricular teaching. The main sources for this prosopographic and iconographic research are libri amicorum.