One click at a time, readers picked the most popular EMA online stories of the past 12 months. It’s worth noting the broad range of this year’s list, from artificial intelligence and early-music education to church-bell ringers, English country dance, and a singer’s personal take on seeing representation (and being that representation) on stage.

In recent years, there’s been so much new information on J.S. Bach’s six cello suites that it can be hard to keep up. A new book is not only the newest (and therefore the most up-to-date) entry in the long catalog of Bach suite studies, it is also outstandingly comprehensive in scope. 

Early musicians often do wildly creative things with old music, and a really good arrangement can reveal qualities that were unheard in the original. Tina Chancey, with help from friends, gets deep into the weeds: ‘Even an extreme appropriation can work, but you have to own it.’

Two esteemed ensembles, two recordings, a new double-disc set. Almost a decade in the making, Ensemble Peregrina and Ensemble Gilles Binchois team up for ‘Summa Leticia: A Survey of Nova Cantica in France, c. 1100’ — music that was radical in its day and, for us, is loaded with such ambiguity that this repertoire is infrequently performed.