When I was an active performer on recorders and baroque flutes, I was diligent about caring for the bores of the instruments. Now, about 10 years after I retired from frequent performance, the bore has probably dried out on most of those instruments. To use them again, one would have to go through the same break-in process as used with a brand-new instrument.

The exceptions are a couple of recorders I have in which the bores are permanently sealed with some sort of urethane-like varnish. One doesn’t have to oil those, and theoretically they never crack. To my ears, they sound a lot like plastic instruments, though better because of the quality control in their manufacture. After the first two, I no longer sought out instruments with this kind of bore.

Most music evolves over time by passing through the hands of various musicians. I don’t imagine that many tunes that are played today and attributed to early musicians have survived in their original form. Most probably benefited from the process with early errors being corrected, but some probably lost their originality as early musicians adapted for their weaknesses.

Not until the 19th century, and especially in the 20th, did musical scholars see fit actually to want to perform music in the style of its origin, often with historically accurate replicas of period instruments. We had to relearn to build and to play the instruments well: just listen to some of the recordings of old music that were made in the 1950s.

I used to be an active practitioner of “historical performance,” on copies of original instruments (and in the case of 17th- and 18th-century music, occasionally actual historical instruments). I was something of a fanatic about performance practice. I am no longer a fanatic about that; I can enjoy 19th-century arrangements of, say, Handel’s Messiah as surely as the next person. But it feels important to me that we never forget how to do it the old way. Some things are too good to be lost to the whims of later fashion.

Music evolves to fit the times in which it’s performed and the players.

I assume that the Swedish collection was transcribed from an actual performance as there were multiple notations systems, most weren’t designed to accommodate more than the basic tune for a very extended period, and were in the “key” of whoever was performing it.

Hildegard von Bingen would be rather shocked to hear her music as it has been recently recorded.

When any of my folks mourn the dearth of the “old” hymns, I immediately pull that one out.

I assumed it was adapted, but the basic tune is simple enough for even beginners to play, although it would have been vocal only for most of its history.

I’m trying to think of any 13th-century tune… and I know a couple… that survives unmodified in a present-day Christmas carol… and I cannot. A few come close, but conventions of later idioms, mostly 18th- and 19th-century, insert themselves into the versions we all know.