Just as Brainard's interests and scholarship crossed several
disciplines, the essays collected here acknowledge her range of
influence and her inclusive spirit. Performative dance and dance
history, social history, and musicological issues are all explored,
touching on topics from the later Renaissance back through the
Carolingian Empire. The interconnected themes are presented in three
sections: first creating the repertory, by looking at the contexts of
musical creation; then interpreting it, through the performance,
meaning, and social identity of dances; and finally discussing potential
reevaluations, based on the location of musical performances, aspects of
transcription difficulties and compositional techniques,
dance-historical scrutiny, and a comparison of a shared genre in music
and dance.