Style history is back. Once considered the very raison d'itre of musical scholarship, the study of the history of compositional styles has in recent decades been eclipsed by a massive expansion of musicological practice to include social history, analysis of all kinds, and, of course, performance practice. Yet the two books here are both—though each in its own way—histories of style. Mara Parker's The string quartet, 1750-1797: four types of musical conversation is a bold attempt to challenge a commonplace of the socalled 'Classical style', using as a tool the conversational quality of the string quartet, immortalized by Goethe's famous remark on its four 'reasonable' members. Simon Keefe's Mozart's piano concertos: dramatic dialogue in the Age of Enlightenment also takes communication, conversation and dialogue as the starting point for a micro-study of one fascinating aspect of Mozart's style: dialogue in the piano concertos. Both books depend on a thorough contextualization of the term 'style'. One book falls short of its ambitious goals, the other succeeds with aplomb