People often ask us to define "classical" equitation. Classical riding is not simply "riding in an older style."  Some people argue that it only means one school or another-- only the German classical approach, or only what you see at the Spanish Riding School, or only "baroque" riding for instance. Although people will get quite fierce about it, the term legitimately has different meanings for different people.

When we use the term "classical" we have a very clear, very specific reason for doing so. Anything that is "classical" has specific attributes. Our approach is "classical" because this form of riding began in antiquity, and more specifically, it traces its roots directly to the time of the early Greeks. The term "Classical" also refers to the Platonic notion of an ideal, a kind of surpassing beauty and transcendant reality that is instantly recognizable as being real. Classical also is used to describe an art form that can be traced through a series of masters through time, and this method has it's champions from Xenophon, through the Italian masters, then the French, to the present era. There is an unbroken and verifiable lineage of masters who practiced this form of riding, who adhered to the principles with which we view training and teaching.

Let's explore the history of riding.

Humans have been interacting with horses for at least 30,000 years. But, at first we were more likely to eat them than anything else. The horse originated on the north american continent, and was hunted to extinction there by the people who first came to the Americas.

The first traces of riding itself are found in the graves of Scythian warriors, notably the graves of both men and women. They lived and rode and died in the area now called the Ukraine. We know very little about their riding, but Homer was so impressed with the stories he heard of these people that he invented the myth of the Amazons around these legendary women warriors.

The earliest record of the riding on which modern dressage is based is from the Greek author Xenophon, a military man and a student of Socrates who lived during the 3rd century BC. He wrote extensively about many things, including farming, house management, veterinary science, and horticulture. One of the subjects he wrote about was the training of the military horse. He wrote "anything forced cannot be beautiful." Xenophon is considered the first of the classical masters.

European riding during the high middle ages was influenced by the experiences of people from the Catholic north who took their heavy horses south in crusades to the Holy Lands. The knights and noblemen who fought in the middle east encountered there the Berber horsemen, and a radically different kind of riding style. These men were mounted on a small, hot, intelligent sort of horse. The northerners were excited by what they saw, and they brought the new riding methods and arab type horses home with them to Europe. (They also brought ideas about mathematics, medicine, astronomy and philosophy, among other things... there were many cultural benefits for Europe that came out of meeting the people of the middle east.)

The best and wealthiest European riders would have a stable with two styles of horses-- heavy horses ridden in the straightforward style of the knight, and lighter arab or arab mixed horses ridden in the agile style of the berber. The two styles of riding were seen as completely separate. Noblemen learned to ride using both methods.

After Xenophon, for nearly 2000 years there is little written record of equitation's ideas and the progress of training methods. Part of the reason that the record is so thin is that the materials they were writing on were ephemeral. Also, very few people were literate, there was little call for written work. There are some early manuscripts from Italian masters of the 13th century, and a wonderful treatise from 1438 by Dom Duarte, the Portuguese King, on tips for riding and training for the nobleman.

Naples Italy is the next place "classical" riding makes its literary mark. Naples had been a Greek colony in antiquity, and was a port that saw the interaction of learned men from all over the old world. During the Italian renaissance, all things Greek again became of interest, and the notion of Platonic beauty and ideals became part of what interested educators- and Xenophon's texts were dusted off and back in circulation.

Three trainers, Grisone, Pignatelli, and Fiaschi are acknowledged as forming the Napolese school, though Fiachi was actually from farther north. Young nobleman came from all over Europe to study how to become a well trained member of the royal court. The Italian academies were sort of a boarding/finishing school where the boys of the best families were sent, very like Eton and Cambridge or Oxford in England, or Exeter and Yale or Harvard in the states. Riding, writing, poetry, dance, military strategy, courtly manners, mathematics, astronomy, latin, rhetoric-- these boys studied everything. And at the heart of it was equitation. The horse taught many things, among them was leadership. The saying was that a horse would throw a prince as readily as a stable boy, so the horse was the only teacher a nobleman might encounter who would always tell him the truth about how effective his leadership really was.

The Renaissance was a time for intellectual and artistic and scientific expansion. At the school at Naples, in a revolutionary move, Grisone combined the riding styles. He took the heavy, forward style of the northern Europeans, which relied on the direct rein and horses ridden very much on the forehand, and integrated the old northern method with the southern style of the Middle Eastern riders, which relied on the indirect rein and a horse ridden very much on the haunches. Grisone's work allowed the rider to choose the balance point best suited for the work he was asking his horse to do in any given moment. This approach was revolutionary.

But the revolution would have been nipped in the bud were it not that Grisone wrote a book which was published in every European language, making his new methods widespread very quickly. (Remember that at this time, riding was not something people did for pleasure so much as it was a martial art. Good riding was a military concern. So anything that gave you an edge on your horse gave your country an edge on the battlefield- and might just save your life as well as your country.)

Thus the young men trained at the academy at Naples were learning a revolutionary new style of equitation. And they were taking it home to the cavalries across Europe, along with the mathematics, grammar, rhetoric and etiquette they learned from their Italian teachers.

The French monarchy, while appreciating the better manners of his educated nobility, had increasingly grown tired of Italianated French youth. Desiring a nobility based in French culture rather than Italian, the King of France decided to establish academies for training the aristocratic youth in France itself. In the late 16th century several schools were established in France where noble sons were sent to learn all the arts and sciences necessary to serve the king. Including, of course, equitation.

François Robichon de la Guérinière became the head of such a school and his book "Ecole de Cavalrie" (The Riding School) was published in 1733. De la Guérinière was a brilliant man, and he was a product of his age: at this time in history, scientific reasoning was beginning to become the mark of an educated man. Therefore, de la Guérinière approached riding from its foundations-- explaining theory as well as practice. This book is still considered the "bible" of classical work. For two hundred years riding developed in France as the center of aristocratic culture. This period of time is called the Golden Age of Equitation-- and it encompasses the 17th and 18th centuries in France.

Then at the end of the 18th century came the French revolution, and most of the practitioners of the art were killed or sent into exile.

Everything that was associated with the old aristocracy was suspect, and equitation was seen as a foppish, elite, snobby pursuit for the idle dilettante. This feeling continues to raise its head even today. Classical riding very nearly died out in the passion for the celebration of the common man.

But cavalries still needed riders and horses, and a solution had to be reached to teach young men to ride- although the young men would no longer have years to study, nor would they have any education on which to base their understanding of equitation.

After the revolution during the middle part of the 19th century, two trainers came into prominence in France. Both claimed to practice "True" Classical riding, and both bosted that they had improved on it. One was the Comte d'Aure, a nobleman who had studied with the brothers Abzac, two classical riding trainers from the original school at Versailles. The other was a middle class upstart named Baucher, and to this day no one is certain where he studied. Both men rather loudly advertised themselves as the best, and each had little or no tolerance for the other.

The Comte d'Aure developed a method of riding based on the idea that the horse is a machine, an idea prominent and very attractive in the mechanically based thought of the industrial age. He promoted the notion that to use the horse correctly one would drive it forward with the leg, and coil it up against the opposing hand like a spring, or a fencing foil. He promoted the use of the leg as more dominant than the hand, and because this was a very quick method to teach inexperienced young recruits, the military in France began using the methods he devised. The method was favored in part because it exploited the rider's instinct to clutch and grab and control, rather than asking the rider to relax and interact with the horse as an autonomous being. There was no time for niceties when you have only 3 to6 months to get a man onto the battle field.

D'Aure's methods were based on a kind of rigid precise control of the horse. He was very interested in cross country riding, and looked for ways to improve riding on rough ground. The new methods he developed set him apart from the aristocratic background that might have cost him his head, and gave him a niche in "cutting edge" riding science of the day. The German trainer Steinbrecht was inspired by this new approach.

The other trainer, Baucher, had fewer supporters in the higher places in large part because he was a commoner, and not a particularly tactful one. The revolution had dispatched the aristocracy, but not the imbedded class consciousness of the French people.

Baucher promoted a very light style of riding which separated the use of the hand and the leg, giving the horse as much autonomy as possible. Baucher worked with the nature of the horse, and based his methods on a deep understanding of the theory behind the actions, and no opposition.

Baucher invented 17 new kinds of movements in equitation. With his understanding of the theoretical basis for the work the trainer was able to request the horse to put its weight exactly where Baucher asked-- and from this he could request anything. Among the movements he invented were the tempe changes (flying change of lead at every stride) and the canter backwards.

Although no one questioned Baucher's mastery of the horse, d'Aure and his followers derided this work as unnatural and wrong, fit only for the circus. Baucher's supporters found that the interesting point was not what odd things you could request of your horse, but rather the absolute clarity of the communication possible between horse and rider.

D'Aure's methods were very attractive to the German trainers of the day, and they adapted many of his ideas into a very precise, controlled, physical riding methodology. The schism between the French and German styles begins to take root at this time.

Baucher's methods were adopted by the elite riders of the French military. These men became very influential in their own right, and they included the trainer L'Hotte, as well as Faverot de Kerbrech and Capitaine Raabe.

It has to be pointed out that while Baucher's method was seen as superior by all the men who tried it, the participants in the tests were skilled riders and educated officers. While we now have the luxury to choose the methodology we prefer, the cavalry trainers were raising large armies for the Napoleonic wars, they had to teach a broad spectrum of inexperienced young recruits very quickly, and the riders would be mounted on anything with four legs that was remotely suitable for riding. D'Aure's more physical style was easier to teach an untrained recruit, and mistakes that the recruit made with his hand were masked by the leg. The method did not require finesse or tact, and could be taught quickly to a large group with a fairly low range of intellectual and athletic skill. Instruction could be given by teachers without particular skill as well, and thus it was probably the right choice for the army riding schools.

But the rancor that existed between the two trainers, and the political and social and class divisions that were brought out in the conflict between the two continue to be felt today.

General Alexis L'Hotte studied with both Baucher and d'Aure. He was in charge of the French Cavalry at the end of the 19th century, and the French Cavalry manual based on his teaching became the basis for French military riding. Baucher's ideas began to be allowed back into the military lexicon at this point.

The US Cavalry sent riders to all the European schools around the turn of the century to research their training and teaching methods, and the French method as it was taught by L'Hotte was seen as superior to any of the other schools. It became the method that we adopted in the US.

Where is Classical Equitation today? Within a few decades of Baucher's death, the role of the horse and how riding methods were judged became a matter of world wide competition where personal preference, politics and style would come to the fore as the arbiters of what was right and wrong.

The committee that formed the rules for international competition, the FEI, was comprised of many German trainers. The rules were established during the time just before world war two-- a time when German nationalism was at a peak. And the very physical German riding style became the basis for the international rules. Thus, every national dressage federation is based around the German methodology. It's very easy to assume that since it's written in the USDF's manual, the method must be the one right way to work a horse.

But, there are still many who prefer working in the more horse-oriented classical French method, and there are still many who find Baucher's work, and the work of many who succeeded him, well worth investigating.

At present it is only the competitive world that drives horse breeding, and in dressage competition is based on German methods-- thus horses are bred for a temperament that will withstand the precise, very physical, very controlled german style. They tend to be athletic without the sparkle and heart that the hotter bloodlines characterize. An andalusian, an arab, a thoroughbred won't naturally tolerate the oppositional methods common today, and riders no longer know how to work with a horse that has that sort of brilliance. Competition defines what is "right" and "wrong" and competition is undertaken under FEI rules, based in the German methodology. It's a self fulfilling cycle of style defining type defining style.

Portugal became a sort of refuge for the old classical methodologies, as Portugal had a strong monarchy well into the 50s, and equitation was a part of court life there. Portugal was more "backward" and less influenced by the homogenization of the rest of the western world. The trainer Nuno Oliveira, and now after his death many of his students, continue to keep a lighter, more horse centered methodology alive.

When the US military methods began to reflect L'Hotte's approach, out west in Oregon a young cowboy joined the cavalry and became familiar with the French masters, and brought it home to the family ranch. The brothers Tom, Bill and Frank Dorrance merged this wealth of classical knowledge with what they were learning from daily experience with wild horses and ranch horses, and went on to begin the movement we call natural horsemanship. There are many similarities between the way we work horses today at NSAE and what you see with good modern natural horsemen, such as Dave Williams and Harry Whitney. Although we are not an N.H. barn, we've found many of the riders who come to work with Craig Stevens have experience or a natural affinity to the N.H. horse handling methods.

There are people in every country exploring what it means to interact with your horse in a conversation, rather than to bully him into submission.

The term "Classical" refers, as we said in the beginning, to the notion of an ideal, a surpassing beauty and reality that is beyond all mortal things. Reaching toward this ideal of perfection one can attain extraordinary beauty, surpassing joy and a truly transcendent experience dancing with a horse as a willing, engaged, and responsive partner. And....it's fun, for both of you!