The silent attentiveness expected of concert audiences is one of the most distinctive characteristics of modern Western musical culture. This is the first book properly to examine the concept of attention in the history of musical thought and its foundations in the writings of German musical commentators of the late eighteenth century. Matthew Riley examines the significant writers on the topic (Descartes, Leibniz, Wolff, Baumgarten, Rousseau, Meier, Sulzer and Forkel) and provides analytical case studies to illustrate how these perceived modes of attention shaped interpretations of music of the period.