The study of medieval and Renaissance music relies heavily on scholarly editions and translations of theoretical and liturgical sources to provide means of interpreting notation, style, and compositional processes. The editing of these texts and sources remains challenging for professional musicologists and social historians, as all musicologists must either translate or use translations of text for their own research.

The five essays in this collection deal with the problems inherent in editing and translating writings on such diverse subjects as music theory, harmonic science, composition, sociology, liturgy, and performance practice.

The papers represent a variety of disciplines, not only in respect to their fields of inquiry, but with respect to the study of music itself, which embraces musicology and ethnomusicology, historical and systematic research, philology and hermeneutics. Throughout is the common thread of the legacy of the ancient classics, in general and in particular, as a stable element in music discourse.