It is a common assumption among musicians that certain performing styles are appropriate to particular parts of the repertory, or to the music of individual composers. It would be difficult to imagine, for example, a Baroque dance movement or a Mozart sonata being played by any modern performer in the same manner as a Liszt fantasia: there appears to be a consensus that the degree of dynamic variation, rhythmic flexibility and so on should vary according to the style of the music being played. This is true of those who use modern instruments as well as those who play on originals, or copies of historic instruments. But how and when did this stylistic awareness develop?

It was in the eighteenth century that ‘old’ music – the music of previous generations – came to be performed regularly in a variety of contexts. Performance of ‘old’ music went hand in hand with its publication and with the writing of some of the earliest histories of music. Exactly how and where this happened is described in Lawson and Stowell's book, and elsewhere. Inevitably, as ‘old’ music was played, questions were raised about its performance.