As the title of the volume suggests, this is an introduction to playing historical keyboard instruments rather than a comprehensive survey of the subject. Aspects of all of the topics covered here have been treated in greater detail elsewhere and it is part of the purpose of the volume to direct readers towards the specialist literature by means of the endnotes and Select Bibliography. In particular, a number of issues that are only touched upon here (such as double dotting, inégales, etc.) are explored in Colin Lawson and Robin Stowell's The historical performance of music: an introduction (Cambridge University Press, 1999), the introductory volume to this series.

The historical scope of this study reflects that of the series to which it belongs. The reader will therefore find a range of topics relevant to the performance of music from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. The study is restricted to performance practices relating to stringed keyboard instruments. This is not because the techniques of early organ playing are fundamentally different from those of stringed keyboard instruments – most early keyboard players included the organ in the range of instruments upon which they performed. However, organ performance does raise a number of issues that are irrelevant to other keyboard instruments, issues not just to do with the instrument itself, but also relating to the context in which the instrument was used.