The early music revivalists were concerned to discover and perform repertoire from before the romantic period that was comparable in scope, size and importance to that which came after it. Initially, attention was focused on the music of the medieval and renaissance periods, but interest soon spilled into the baroque and classical periods, because the other ambition of the early music revivalists was to gain an understanding of and replicate the way in which these repertoires were performed at the time of their first hearing. This involved trying to understand the instruments and performance conventions that prevailed in periods when considerably fewer performance directions were written in notated music than came to be the case in later eras. The early music revival gave birth to different opportunities for both performers and audiences, and it caused a major shift in musicology, organology and in the way that music students learned and were taught.
