For the first time, Dr. David Whitwell presents a thorough study of the performance of music in society together with the philosophical views on art versus entertainment, the role of performance in education and character formation and how earlier philosophers viewed the interplay among Reason, Emotions, experience and the senses. The present volume gives the reader a comprehensive view of the aesthetics of music in sixteenth-century Italy, France and Spain. Included here are some of the greatest writers and artists of the High Renaissance, including Castiglione, Cardano, Michelangelo and Montaigne. Since the sixteenth century represents the final chapter in the long Church philosophy of Scholasticism in music, the reader will find particular interest in separate chapters on the Theory of Music versus the Practice of Music in Italy.