"The seventeen contributors to this volume are all renowned specialists in their respective repertoires: the Renaissance and Baroque, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Verdi, Debussy, and much else. Their essays, all newly written for this book, use a wide array of source materials to probe issues pertaining to a cross section of musical works and musical life from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries." "These essays will prove welcome to anyone fascinated by the problems of reconstructing - reimagining, sometimes - the evanescent musical art of the past and pondering its implications for musical life today and in the future."--BOOK JACKET.