This standard work is an introduction to the interpretation of keyboard music from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century. Dr Ferguson provides information about the instruments themselves, and discusses this vast, fascinating, and ever-changing subject under the headings: musical types and forms, tempo, phrasing and articulation, fingering, rhythmic conventions, the `tones' or modes, ornamentation, pianists' problems, and editors' problems.

It is a clear, detailed, and practical guide to a...