This volume offers the first systematic exploration of the past as manifested in music of the later Middle Ages and the early modern period. It takes the reader on a journey of discovery across the continent, from the genesis of a new sense of a musical past in early thirteenth-century Paris to the complex and diverse roles and pedigrees given music of the past in sources, media, genres, communities, and regions in the Age of Reformations. Particular attention is given to the use of older styles and musical traditions in changing constructions of religious and political identity, laying the groundwork for a revised narrative of European music history that accommodates within its framework the full plurality of styles and regions found in the sources. The volume concludes with reflections on the conflicting appropriations and effects of the musical past today in composition, performance, musicological discourse, and tourism.