The audacity of [Goodman's] scholarship lies in locating musical meaning not in the creativity of the composers' works contained in the manuscripts, nor even in the expressiveness of amateur performances at home or in social settings. Rather, as Goodman shows, the handwork of the copied music itself was what mattered the most to the copyist to whom it belonged.
Glenda Goodman is an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania who works on the history of music in early America.