On one side, the population of those who may wish to examine the sources of a work for accurate information is no longer a mere handful of specialists (who, in any case, generally have to use the originals). It now embraces students and ex-students who have been taught the intellectual value of primary sources. On the other side, a combination of curiosity and sentiment leads many music-lovers to the sources, in the hope that they will somehow thus experience the music in a truer and purer form. Above all, they may be able to perform it from a score that closely resembles the original. This point of view was expressed as long ago as 1974 by Joscelyn Godwin in the magazine Early Music.' He suggested that to enjoy the full aesthetic experience of the past, one should not just play the music in the way it would have been played on original instruments, but should play it from the original notation. Then one could say, for instance, Ah, this is what it must have been like to be a settecento Venetian! He continued: Living in our time, we do well to holiday in saner ages. Many readers will have noticed that music is an excellent vehicle for such voyages. To enjoy the full savor of romantic time-traveling, one would need to play from the original score itself. For early music this pastime is now restricted to millionaires. But a facsimile is a good second-best. There is the further difficulty, however, that much early music still needs the intervention of an editor to interpret its notation. The time may come one day when enough performers have re-educated themselves in the idiosyncrasies of early music notation (C clefs, continuo realization, ornament signs and the rest) to be able to use unedited facsimiles with confidence. I do not think that we have reached that stage yet for