For the first time, Dr. David Whitwell presents a thorough study of the performance of music in society together with the philosophical views on art versus entertainment, the role of performance in education and character formation and how earlier philosophers viewed the interplay among Reason, Emotions, experience and the senses. The present volume gives the reader a comprehensive view of the aesthetics of music in sixteenth-century Germany, England and the Low Countries. Included here are the first significant contemporary German performance descriptions by Michael Praetorius, Cochlaeus, Ornithoparchus, Listenius, Glarean and Coclico. And of course the reader will find the aftermath of Martin Luther, particularly through the accounts of Erasmus. With regard to England, one finds here extensive accounts of the first great period of English music, including descriptions from poets, fiction and of course the Elizabethan Theater which is known for its attempt to accurately reflect sixteenth-century life. With regard to the future, perhaps there was no greater harbinger than the historic shift through which music was no longer a pursuit of the noble but became the function of servants.