These essays illustrate the diversity of approaches that scholars have applied to the study of text and music in the first decade of the twenty-first century. In their sampling of a fascinating variety of musical genres, milieux, and practices, these studies open windows for new insights into cultural history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as into the lives and musical thinking of writers, composers, and performers. --Douglass Seaton, Warren D. Allen Professor of Music, Florida State University