Readings in the History of Music in Performance - Tapa dura

This is a most important contribution to the practical art of interpretation, consisting as it does of passages by writers on musical performance from the late Middle Ages through to the borders of the classical and romantic periods from Jerome of Moravia to Hector Berlioz...Brief but excellent biographical sketches by Carol MacClintock precede each entry. The 65 selections in "Readings in the History of Music in Performance" include travelers' accounts, reviews, letters, and pedagogic texts. They reveal the conventions of earlier musical notation, what constituted a concert in other times, how musicians performed their music, and how their audiences heard it.