The most reliable advice about Baroque violin playing was written in the eighteenth century, and none of it has been superseded. A guide to the six primary sources – and an honest account of where self-study runs out.

Historically informed performance is not about playing old music in a museum. It is a way of reading music – asking where a phrase comes from, what it wants, how its rhetorical structure shapes the bow arm. This article explains what HIP actually is, and why it tends to make everything you play more interesting.