The past few decades have witnessed a virtual explosion in scholarly writing about musical performance. A vast literature on historical performance practice, the psychology of performance, the relation between analysis and performance, and ‘interpretation’ broadly defined has emerged during that time, but until now, no attempt has been made to distil the principal trends of performance scholarship into a single volume more accessible in style and content than the highly specialised – and often obscure – publications of its various subdisciplines. This book provides such a forum, and it does so by means of the ‘studies’ format widely used in music publishing. Whereas most collections of ‘studies’ focus on a single composer, however, this volume targets a musical activity of importance to all musicians – professional and amateur, academic and nonacademic. As a result, the book has a wide appeal lacking in much specialist writing, at the same time achieving a remarkable depth of insight into musical interpretation. Furthermore, it reflects the growing recognition of performance studies as a discipline in its own right. Among the international authorship are distinguished scholars in a range of subject areas; many are also accomplished performers whose considerable practical experience shapes their writing and lends the book particular vitality and cogency.

Despite the broad spectrum of topics, resonances between chapters are abundant. Indeed, the division into three sections – fundamentals, structure and meaning in performance, and performance as process – is neither rigid nor intended to sever the threads running through the volume, which include such diverse themes as performance ‘architecture’; the relation between musical moment and narrative process; shape as diachronic counterpart to structure; the role of intuition in performance; the relation between composer, performer and listener; the ‘text(s)’ of performance; and the inevitable partiality of interpretation and the need for choice among more or less plausible alternatives.