ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes evidence which addresses various processes implicated in the performance of notated music: sight-reading, preparation and memorization and highlights the various approaches, achievements and limitations of empirical performance research. Musicians learn their craft through the apprentice model and performing traditions are passed on orally and through supervised practice or occasions for the community to join the singing and playing. Music notation in Europe dates back to ancient Greece and Egypt but the basics of our system have been in place only since about the second half of the sixteenth century. Western notation can accurately indicate pitch and can approximate note duration fairly well but is silent on timbre, tempo, volume, intensity and all those ineffable aspects that make a performance "musical" or "expressive." Performing written music involves numerous skills, both cognitive and motor. The biggest problems of performing notated music of historical times are that the meaning of the signs and symbols has changed.
