Illuminating Music History

Before there were mass printing presses and the benefits of good lighting, monks and nuns used to spend hours penning sheets of music for use in church services — for both music and prayer. The large sheets were meant to be shared by people and to be easily read by candlelight.

“These are the beginning of our culture’s organization of music,” said Bryan Shuler ’83, gesturing to the six illuminated manuscripts spread on tables throughout the classroom, tangibly bringing the 11th through the 15th centuries to the second day of class in the Ferman Music Center. “This is your culture, this is your history. I want you to see where your personal professional history began.”

To think of the stories of all the people who touched those sheets of music and to feel connected to them was incredible, said Coleman Flentge ’18, a double major in music and psychology.

“It's a connection to my ancestors in music and a way to feel at one with those who came before us,” said Flentge, of Benton, KY. “It also gives hope that maybe the things I do and the contributions I make may last like this music. Or at least, that's the goal.”

Shuler’s course is an introduction to music literature, where he said existing examples are available as far back as the Middle Ages. Rather than just share photos of these ancient manuscripts from the text or Web, Shuler wanted his students to have a more interactive experience.

Shuler can certainly be called a lifetime learner himself.

He got his undergraduate degrees in piano performance and music theory from UT, and then graduate degrees in humanities with a focus on Meso-American culture and the Maya calendar, and music degrees in electronic composition, ethnomusicology and humanities with a focus in anthropology.

He was a Fulbright fellow as a composer in residence with the National Dance Company of Ghana and served as an African cultural expert for Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic Society in 2013, spending six weeks teaching and leading inland excursions on board a ship traveling from tip to tip off the Western coast of Africa and will again in 2015. Oh yes, and he is a history expert for the History Channel’s Museum Men show. He also has his private investigator certification, is earning his EMT training and is a baseball fan who works as a security guard at Tropicana field on occasion.

He is a big believer in experiential education and said he hopes to teach in a way his students will remember.

It helps that Shuler is also the cartobibliographer for the world's largest medieval manuscript leaves dealer, located in St. Petersburg and run by Anthony Griffon. Shuler said he is a big believer in education and thus, in sharing the manuscripts.

“I wanted students to handle the velum examples, some without cover or gloves. I wanted the students to see them, smell them, touch them,” Shuler said. “I wanted the students to gain a connection with the origins of Western music. And what a way to start the semester. “