Most of our performances of Renaissance ensemble music mirror only too exactly the blank appearance of the original parts. The normal reaction of the conscientious instrumentalist who has been brought up on scores sprinkled with signs indicating just how each note is to be played—as well as what tone is be to sounded and for how long—is to conclude that, if no ‘expression’ signs are present, then the composer was concerned only with pitch and duration, and that to produce anything more would be to mispresent his intentions. The resulting ‘abstract’ performance is inadvertently encouraged by those musical scholars who stress the new emphasis on expression of emotion found in the Baroque period (always in contrast to the music of earlier periods) and by the many musicologists who look at early instrumental music primarily to search for traces of its liberation from the tyranny of vocal style.