Bruce Haynes (1940-2011) made a career as an oboist in a classical orchestra and, from a young age, was interested in the history of performance practice and his instrument (in the late 1960s, he opened a workshop in California where he supervised the production of replicas of Baroque oboes). His experience performing on modern and historical instruments, concerts and recordings with renowned musicians and ensembles, and interactions with musicologists form the basis of this book, in which Haynes recounts how codified musical notation and the dissemination of musical works on paper gradually purged Western music of variation and made it 'academic'—and how, then, in the last half-century, academic musicians discovered an entire universe behind the austere façade of their discipline, from which, unable to completely subjugate it, this discipline emerged. Thus, the historical end of early music proved to be the condition for its beginning, a new birth, in which the author of this book was also involved.