Over the last dozen or so years the musical landscape has been changed significantly by the revival of early instrumental music. People are now making and playing many Renaissance and early baroque instruments which until recently were not even mentioned in standard dictionaries.

Praetorius's De Organographia, first published in 1618, can be called the book behind the revival. While it has long been an essential tool for musicologists, it is now exercising a wider, more popular appeal as the...