Bach, Handel and Scarlatti

'Mark Kroll's book is an engaging read and meticulously researched, full of a wealth of details about the performance of the music of Bach, Handel, and Scarlatti in Britain between 1750 and 1850. His study brings this wide variety of source material together for the first time, giving us a glimpse into the intriguing history of the music's reception and the aesthetics guiding British interest in early music during this period.' Charlotte Mattax Moersch, Early Music America 'I would recommend this little volume both to a wide audience and to musicians and musicologists who already know something on the subject … Kroll's valuable contribution shows the start of the interest in Early Music in Britain and the commonly held views of those times.' Ton Koopman, Boston Musical Intelligencer 'Kroll's painstaking historical exploration demonstrates quite clearly that our reverence for early music in forms that its composers would recognize differs sharply from the attitude to 'ancient music' between 1750 and 1850, when musicians felt 'little compunction in tampering with the music' (57). Such compunction, and outrage at its absence, are products of our own age, not reflections of immutable perfection of untouchable monuments of the musical past. We owe a debt of gratitude to Kroll's Element for highlighting this difference.' Jonathan Rhodes Lee, Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute