Maxwell not only sings seven of Hildegard's songs, she also accompanies herself on two psalteries, the
organistrum, and Anglo-Saxon and medieval harps, instruments she learned to play for the show, which she has been developing for Close to two years.
His attention to the history of the Early Music movement, beginning at the end of the nineteenth century in Germany and Austria, is embedded in chapter 6, "Strings," at the end of his description of stringed keyboards, including those that are rubbed, such as the
organistrum, those played by touching, such as the clavichord, and the thorny terminology connected to those played by plucking (harpsichord, virginal and its Flemish form, the muselaar, and the spinet among others), and "Hitting, or More Politely Hammering" (pianos).