For many instruments and instrument families, there are decisive differences between instruments in use over time. Within the timeframe of this book, wind instruments varied significantly, with the adoption of valved brass and increasingly sophisticated keywork on woodwinds. The pianoforte – the backbone of much solo and chamber repertory, and a symbol of burgeoning middle-class and domestic music making – was also in the stages of what a modernist viewpoint would term ‘development’, and benefitted from rapid technological changes via the Industrial Revolution. To perform music from between 1840 and 1920 in as historically ‘accurate’ a way as possible would require access to several different instruments to reflect these changes.

‘Modernisation’ of the violin, with inclined neck, elongated fingerboard, and strengthened bass bar, occurred in the early nineteenth century, whilst the Tourte model bow emerged as a standard at much the same time. (These organological matters are well-known and reported elsewhere: they will not be considered in detail in this volume). It would be a mistake, for obvious reasons, to assume that these changes happened comprehensively and quickly. A violinist active in the early to mid nineteenth century might well have retained older models of instrument and bow; the complex ‘evolution’ of the violin bow design is likely to have been particularly gradual. The notion of ‘period instruments’, then, is something of a simplistic nonsense, because time and place, as well as personal preference or circumstance of each performer, all come into the equation. The ubiquitous use of the term ‘period instruments’ in recent times acts as little more than a convenient marketing identifier, except in specific instances in which particular instruments relevant to a performance context have been identified and employed.

By a similar token, discussion of ‘modern’ instrumentation is also crude. Bruce Haynes describes the ‘modern orchestra’ provocatively as the ‘romantic orchestra’ in The End of Early Music, owing to the fact that fundamental aspects of ‘modern’ instruments date from at least the end of the nineteenth century: valved brass, woodwind with modern keywork, modern-pattern string instruments, cellos with endpins, and so forth.