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mance is an act in which both the song and the singer participate; identity is a property of the singer in the first place. Unfortunately, the introductory chapter of the volume does not sort out the intricacies of these concepts, nor does it note their quite different standings. In vain one looks for a basic discussion of them, but even definitions are lacking. The concepts are simply taken for granted and illustrated by examples that are not always appropriate. Identity, for example, is connected with groups, whereas in the essays that follow the introduction it appears time and again that songs also play a very important role in the formation of individual identities. And if local songbooks are connected with local identities, at least a qualification is necessary: if many people who claim a certain local identity are nevertheless unaware of the existence of a particular local songbook, the songbook belongs to a subclass of that local identity at best. In the introduction, intertextuality is mostly confined to contrafact, therefore leaving aside many other interesting types of intertextuality and also the possibility of musical intertextuality. The extent to which the individual essays pay tribute to the three key concepts varies greatly. Intertextuality is discussed in a few essays only, and performance in a few more. Identity, on the other hand, is discussed in all contributions; in some, the word occurs so often that it gets irritating. Despite this criticism, however, one can say that the individual contributions are of high quality, well written, and on interesting topics with a lot of detail. The book is carefully edited and nicely produced. Most often song texts are cited in translation in the main text, with the original text in a footnote. There are many illustrations, some of them in full color. As a final remark, there are, regrettably, no indexes, neither of personal names nor of titles or subjects. Despite these few critical remarks on secondary matters, the book is worthy to be read or purchased as a very useful introduction to the wonderland of song and song culture in the early modern period.