A scholar of American musical history reflects on ‘Niagara,’ an obscure symphony that connects centuries of our nation’s cultural life, proving once again that the only thing fixed about American musical identity is that it remains in a constant state of flux.

A new recording of golden-age viola da gamba music, highlighted by Marin Marais and Antoine Fourqueray, makes for a rewarding debut album. Pairing the viol with just a single theorbo, intriguingly, allows for easy, conversational flow between the two musicians.

Anyone curious about the phenomenal growth of early music in the last decades of the 20th century is bound to run across the name David Munrow. In his short but ebullient career, just nine years, the English musician, scholar, and entrepreneur arguably did more than anyone to create the early-music scene we know today.

‘That raises the question of what we’re doing when we study all those treatises and try to play like Couperin. Probably not everybody sounded like Couperin in Couperin’s day, or wanted to. And maybe we don’t actually want to sound like Couperin, either — we want to sound like a plausible, tasteful, expressive but individual performer.’