Underpinned by author John Rink's internationally acclaimed scholarship and experience as a musician, this book addresses fascinating topics in the field of musical performance studies concerning the history, analysis and psychology of music, as well as artistic research. It offers manifold practical insights into musical performance, ranging from detailed technical features to overall shape. The volume has four main parts, focusing on performance and performance studies, historical performance, analysis and performance, and artistic research. Case studies of romantic piano pieces appear throughout, including Liszt's 'Vallée d'Obermann', Brahms's Fantasien Op. 116, and select preludes and concertos by Rachmaninoff and Chopin. The book also includes discussions of recordings by such artists as Alfred Brendel, Artur Rubinstein and Nikita Magaloff along with some outstanding performances in the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in 2015. Rink explores issues surrounding the identity and artistic voice of the performer by elucidating the sense-making and decision-making process underlying musical performance of all kinds. He also offers broad insights into musical ontology, epistemology and semantics, in addition to demonstrating some of the methodologies now used to study performance. As a whole, the book highlights the powerful effects that experiencing music in performance can have on those who take part in it, in any capacity.

Written in characteristically lucid and incisive prose this book is both a seminal and a culminating contribution to the field that Rink helped to define, and will be essential reading for anyone interested in musical performance. * Eric F. Clarke, Emeritus Professor of Music, University of Oxford *
Building on and developing key writings published in a wide range of sources, this book provides an overview of Rink's thinking that will be equally indispensable for academics interested in performance and for performers seeking to understand and develop their creative agency. * Nicholas Cook, Emeritus Professor of Music, University of Cambridge *
A twelve-step scrutiny of music performance studies, John Rink's Music in Profile offers the reader an astute, insightful and subtly personalised perspective on the discipline. Approaching the subject as both scholar and musical practitioner, the author maps a conception of performers' strategies, analysis, and self-reflection. * Lina Navickaitė-Martinelli, Professor and Senior Researcher, Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. *
This book brings together three decades of John Rink's work rethinking and recasting scholarship on musical performance. His musicality, scholarship, and deep affection for Romantic piano music come through on every page. * Edward Klorman, Associate Professor, Schulich School of Music, McGill University *
This collection of essays surveys the thinking of a pioneering figure in performance research, distinguished by methodological adventurousness, and steeped in love for the Romantic keyboard repertoire. * Natasha Loges, Professor at Hochschule für Musik Freiburg *
John Rink explores how performance and scholarship-so unalike in their nature, culture and procedures-can communicate, interact, sometimes even merge. Judiciously and humanely, he enriches the reader's sense of how variously they may make music together. * Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, Emeritus Professor of Music, King's College London *
Overall, Rink presents fascinating insights into processes of interpretation and performance from the perspectives of performer, scholar, and informed listener. In bringing together a breadth of methodologies, he offers models for others interested in the field. He also contributes to a growing body of scholarship expanding notions of the musical work. His book is a must-read for pianists, theorists, musicologists, ethnologists, ethnomusicologists, and for scholars of all kinds engaging or interested in performance studies and ontology. * Erinn E. Knyt, Notes *
Overall, Rink presents fascinating insights into processes of interpretation and performance from the perspectives of performer, scholar, and informed listener. In bringing together a breadth of methodologies, he offers models for others interested in the field. He also contributes to a growing body of scholarship expanding notions of the musical work. His book is a mustread for pianists, theorists, musicologists, ethnologists, ethnomusicologists, and for scholars of all kinds engaging or interested in performance studies and ontology. * Erinn E. Knyt, Notes *

John Rink is Professor of Musical Performance Studies at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow and Director of Studies in Music at St John's College, Cambridge. He is a prize-winning author and expert in the fields of performance studies, nineteenth-century music, music analysis and digital musicology. He is Editor-in-Chief of The Complete Chopin, and he also directed Chopin Online and the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice. He performs regularly as a pianist and lecture-recitalist, and has served on the jury of the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in 2015 and 2021.