The Art of Natural Dressage

I serched the forum for Claudio Corte, Federic Grisone, and Cesare Fiaschi; I only found a mention of one of the worst pages from Grisone (and a recent mention by me of Claudio Corte).

Italian old sources (XVI Century) are the deep roots of more famous Frech High scool of Pluvinel and so on, and Italian original books can be found online, but they are very difficult to read, both for language and for very old style characters. So, I thought that a first step to let them al little more known is their transcription and digitalization; now, the first book is completely transcripted into italian wikisource, here: Il cavallarizzo, by Claudio Corte, 1562. Work is going on about transcription of the book by Cesare Fiaschi, Trattato dell'imbrigliare, atteggiare e ferrare cavalli, very interesting for many drawings of ancient bits and horseshoes and for unusual use of music into High Scool training for rythm.

Now, even if transcripted, old Italian is really difficult, and I too sometimes am very confused about. More, my English is very poor, and I can think, speak and write "at liberty" in English, but I find extreme difficulty when I try to translate carefully a text from Italian into English. So, the best I can do is to give you some flashes about the content, and - if some of you is deeply interested about - I could too translate some little bits of those books into "modern Italian", if this can help.

Just a mentio to the fact that Corte knows that Dressage at liberty is possible, and describes it a little into one of the last chapters of his book.
[Even if it seems impossible, nevertheless it is true: I saw horses performing High scool movements by themselves, without a man on the saddle; http://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Il_cavall ... apitolo_64 ]

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Alex

-thus coming full circle - isn't the basis of the High Shool movements supposed to be what horses can be observed doing "by themselves, without a man in the saddle" ?

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"There is always an alternative to every cruel act".

Keep in consideration, Rita, that Corte doesn't say that it's possible to train a horse at liberty: he says that sometimes a particularly minded horse can do High Scool movements after a complete formal training, just as tells that some horses, as a final step of training, can be ridden bitless (in 1562!). Working at liberty, not be trained at liberty... It's really different. But he tells too that he saw some horses work at liberty after an unknown style of training .... I guess, some people here and there discovered AND tecniques much time ago; but many trainers had their secrets and didn't share them!

The same chapter ends with a very curious observation, that suggests that in XVI Century already some people regretted "old times" :

[and if this had been true in those horses, why can't we believe that we can get such training with other horses today? Perhaps better? Perhaps the Art is gone? Isn't true instead that it is prospering as never did? Perhaps there is any more appropriate horse?]

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Alex

I have split this topic and moved parts of it, along with parts of the "Download all the classics!" thread to the AND Lifestyle section. Discussions about our way of interacting at AND can be continued over there: Opinions vs. absolute truths and (dis)agreeing in AND