Classical Dressage - Dressage Masters and Authors

Dressage Masters and Authors

• Xenophon (427-355 BC): Greek general, the earliest European master with surviving treatises, wrote On Horsemanship which advocated the use of sympathetic training of the horse. Despite living over 2000 years ago, his ideas are still widely praised
• Federico Grisone (mid-16th century): one of the few to write on horsemanship to that point since Xenophon. Was considered a master of his time; his methods are viewed as harsh and cruel by modern standards
• Giovanni Battista Pignatelli (mid- to late-16th century)
• Salomon de La Broue (1530–1610)
• Antoine de Pluvinel (1555–1620): the first of the French riding masters, author of L’Instruction du Roy en l’Exercise de Monter a Cheval, tutor to King Louis XIII, and is the first notable writer to advocate for gentle training since Xenophon
• William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle (1592–1676): Master of Horse to Charles II of England
• François Robichon de La Guérinière (1688–1751): taught the classical position still used today, introduced the flying change, and had great impact on the Spanish Riding School
• François Baucher (1796–1873): introduced the one-tempi flying change, his method, which is still hotly contested, was based on the fact that the horse's jaw is the source of all resistance; there are two 'manners' by which Baucher is known, the first a more dominant form of riding comparable to the modern rollkur, the second more associated with 'lightness' and a lessening of the hands and legs as the horse progresses
• Count Antoine Cartier D'Aure (1799–1863)
• James Fillis
• Gustav Steinbrecht (1808–1885)
• Maximilian Weyrother director of the Spanish Riding School
• Alois Podhajsky (1898–1973): became director of the Spanish Riding School in 1939; his books in English translation form the basis of Classical Dressage today
• Nuno Oliveira
• Egon von Neindorff (dressage) (1923–2004): author of The Art of Classical Horsemanship