It is difficult to describe Andrew Parrott's magnificent book The Pursuit of Musick, except with superlatives: he has assembled an extraordinary treasure trove of material which documents the myriad ways in which our recent ancestors engaged with music. These are the unfiltered voices from the past: The Pursuit of Musick is an encyclopaedic and generously illustrated anthology of original written sources, exploring some 600 years of musical activity in Europe, from the first troubadours to the emergence of the pianoforte.  And the modern practising musician quickly notes that nothing much has changed in the sheer dogged business of 'getting…