This doctoral thesis shows a didactic and artistic analysis for students and teachers of elementary and professional studies in the subject of percussion. The aim is to extend the pedagogical practice by means of musical materials extracted from compositions prior to the 19th century, with a view to bringing historical percussion closer to the current teaching of percussion in schools. This study provides the field of scientific research with a new repertoire on which to base its didactic support, and also provides compositions from the 16th to the 18th centuries that have been scarcely studied in depth. At the same time, scientific information sources are extracted that help to understand and investigate percussion in the first musical treatises. The qualitative methodology has helped to understand the different points of view of the research. Thus, the action-research methodology has provided a valid solution to connect practice and theory.Similarly, the instrument for collecting information has been the interview. This technique has been used with early music musicians and performers, who at the same time complement their work activity with actual teaching, both within and outside our borders, which has made it possible to observe and analyse different connections between the various categories implemented. Consequently, the lack of cognition of historical percussion in today's music teaching centres is being contemplated. This is the reason why this research becomes a starting point for a didactic, patrimonial and cultural transformation.