This collection of studies by Ellen Rosand represents the range of her contribution to the history and criticism of music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Varied in focus and scope, each of these studies is directed toward developing an understanding of the ways in which music works--from its function in representing the ideals of the Republic of Venice through its essential role in the emerging genre of opera, from the expressive mechanics of Monteverdi and Cavalli to those of Handel and Vivaldi. With methodological flexibility, Rosand's analyses are responsive to the works themselves. Exploring the mimetic significance of particular formal motifs and scenic conventions, the intimate relationship of music and text, or a composer's dramatic choices, discovering a new musical personality (Barbara Strozzi) or the historical and cultural circumstances, the practical and creative dynamics of an emerging dramatic art (opera in Venice), she has opened entirely new prospects on seventeenth-century music and offered new insight into the more canonical repertoire of the eighteenth century.