Part history, part explanation of early music, this book also plays devil's advocate, criticizing current practices and urging experimentation. Haynes, a veteran of the movement, describes a vision of the future that involves improvisation, rhetorical expression, and composition. Written for musicians and non-musicians alike.

Bruce Haynes' profile page

Recently retired as a performer, Bruce Haynes worked for many years in Holland. He introduced the hautboy into the Dutch music curriculum, teaching at the Royal Conservatory. Currently, he is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Music at the University of Montreal. He has published widely on the history of the oboe and performing pitch standards.

"Haynes has made a series of subtle and important points for all listeners, musicians, all artists and potentially all art in fact, very well.... If you have anything but the most casual interest in music before 1800 and its most proper and effective performance, then this readable and well-argued book, which has a great balance of technical and non-technical illustrations for the practicing musician and listener alike, should not be ignored. Thoroughly recommended."--Mark Sealey, Classical Net

"'Early Music' (with its off-putting "scare-quotes") is dead; long live early music! Reading the mature reflections of one of the 'Early Music Movement's' important revolutionaries about the panorama of performing styles in today's musical world is both a pleasure and a challenge. Mr. Haynes's breadth and depth of learning and observation is admirable, but more important is his clear-minded yet passionate formulation of an artistic vision of creative musicianship for our time."--Stephen Stubbs, Northwest Center for Early Music Studies

"From one of the brightest lights in the field of baroque music comes yet another indispensable book. Only Haynes, a performer of great sensitivity and dedication to the 'project' of historical performance, only Haynes, a scholar of alacrity and dynamism, only Haynes, who for over thirty years has never stopped interrogating what we are doing when we approach the past in performance, only Haynes could have written a brilliant book for early music in the new millennium. It is thoughtful, iconoclastic, tender, and honest. This is the new Quantz-obligatory reading for everyone who cares about early music."--Kate van Orden, performer on historical instruments and Professor, University of California, Berkeley