Networking is a cardinal buzzword of the twenty-first century, from the social exchanges that we conduct for pleasure to the professional contacts that we develop for work. Networking, of course, is not a modern concept: in the early modern period, for instance, individuals – especially those who travelled extensively, such as diplomats, merchants and musicians – built and maintained extensive professional and social networks. Yet the mechanisms of network-building before the rise of digital exchange are challenging to explore. How did people forge, document and maintain professional and social networks in the past? It is this question that drives Samantha Owens's recent book, a study of the ‘well-travelled’ Hungarian-born musician John Sigismond Cousser (1660–1727). For nearly thirty years Cousser documented the professional contacts he acquired during his travels in a notebook (US-NHub, James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection, Osborn Music Ms. 16) that has hitherto evaded scholarly attention. Owens examines the manuscript, often referred to as Cousser's Commonplace Book, in order to uncover the ways in which Cousser established and maintained an extensive network over time. Owens argues that the notebook not only reveals the critical role Cousser and musicians like him played in the spread of French and Italian musical styles, but also shows that Dublin – the final city in which the composer worked – was not the musical backwater it is commonly assumed to have been, but rather a thriving musical centre that had access to and interest in musical developments on the Continent.

Studies in the dissemination of French and Italian musical styles at the turn of the eighteenth century tend to take relatively abstract approaches. Many focus, for instance, on the contributions of major composers who melded these aesthetics or explored the conflicts between them, such as François Couperin and Jean-Philippe Rameau; others evaluate the circulation of musical materials in multinational communities, such as French or Italian opera librettos printed in Amsterdam or Hamburg. While such approaches are invaluable, Owens adds a degree of granularity and intimacy to this subject by examining how Cousser as an individual participated in the spread of French and Italian music. As she announces in her Introduction, her goal ‘is unashamedly not a “life and works” study’ (7). Organizing the book into nine chapters that chronologically track Cousser's career, Owens demonstrates how Cousser used his knowledge of French and Italian music to respond to the unique environment and demands of each region in which he worked, even as she provides a detailed overview of his life. For example, one of the first places in which Cousser worked was the court of Württemberg in Stuttgart. In the last quarter of the seventeenth century, this court experienced an efflorescence of interest in all things French, thanks in part to the tastes of its rulers and also, though Owens does not discuss it, to the growing reputation of Paris as a cultural model for European cities (see, for instance, Joan Elizabeth DeJean, How Paris Became Paris: The Invention of the Modern City (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014)). As Owens discusses in the opening chapter of her book, Cousser capitalized on the mania at court for Gallic culture, probably using his knowledge of French musical style to secure a position there. Once employed, he further facilitated the rise of interest in French music by composing in that idiom. This case study demonstrates how the contributions of individual musicians supported broader cultural shifts that helped sustain interest in French music outside of France.

Cousser had not yet begun his notebook when he was first employed in Württemberg. Indeed, for the first five chapters of The Well-Travelled Musician, which primarily discuss his employment at the courts of Württemberg and Wolfenbüttel and at the public opera houses in Braunschweig and Hamburg, Owens relegates the notebook to the occasional footnote as she discusses Cousser's compositional output and ever-growing circle of professional associates. It is not until chapter 6, which recounts the composer's arrival in London, that the notebook begins to feature more prominently in Owens's narrative. With entries on topics such as prominent figures for a professional musician to meet in London and noteworthy idiosyncrasies of English instrumentalists, Cousser's notebook paints an intimately vivid portrait of the early eighteenth-century capital that will prove useful to scholars researching musical life in the city.

Cousser's notebook was not merely a repository of local luminaries and cultural tips. As Owens outlines in her Introduction, the Commonplace Book contains multiple sections addressing distinct topics from musical matters such as music theory, musical instruments, compositions, and inventories of librettos and compositions that Cousser owned, to medicinal remedies and other miscellaneous items. A complete transcription is beyond the purview of this study, but Owens does provide five appendices that document the contents of the notebook. The appendices provide a treasure trove of information about musical life and networks during Cousser's lifetime, as well as an endearing glimpse into the musician's personality. Cousser was a man interested equally in the compositions of Giovanni Bononcini as in recipes for Bratwurst and methods for removing warts. From the point of view of organization, one almost wishes that the appendices formed a separate companion volume to Owens's book, if only to draw more attention to the value of their contents for researchers interested in early modern music collection practices, medicinal habits and, of course, professional networks.

While the Commonplace Book is richly detailed, it nevertheless demands significant detective work to illuminate the full architecture of Cousser's network. The success of Owens's sleuthing is especially apparent in the final chapter, in which she illuminates the various ways in which Cousser was able to acquire music from or send music to the Continent during his time in Dublin. Owens mines a list of names in the notebook that range from the well-known Amsterdam-based music seller Estienne Roger to minor sea merchants who helped carry mail from taverns and coffee houses in London to the Continent, such as ‘John Hatton, at ÿ old wild Sea’ (170). By plotting them together on her conceptual map of Cousser's network, Owens demonstrates how these individuals scaffolded a system of surprisingly diverse routes over which music travelled.

The ambitious ground that Owens covers in The Well-Travelled Musician serves as an invitation for further explorations of Cousser's personality and career, as well as the musical networks in which he participated. How might Cousser's interest in the medicinal remedies enumerated in the Commonplace Book yield additional insight into his prowess as a networker extraordinaire? What other records kept by musicians who have been excluded from the musical canon could reveal clues about international networks of musical personalities in the early modern period? Owens's study also poses compelling questions to print historians: what role, for example, did music sellers like Estienne Roger play in disseminating national musical styles beyond their place of origin, especially through the agency of professional musicians like Cousser? Finally, Owens issues an exciting invitation for the geographical mapping of networks of musical exchange in early modern Europe. A multimedia map of Cousser's network would be a useful teaching resource for those interested in exploring the musical links between disparate regions of eighteenth-century Europe.

While Owens concludes her work by uncovering Cousser's own practices of musical exchange, the networking techniques that she discusses are ones that other musicians in this period would have used. This, ultimately, is the benefit of The Well-Travelled Musician: that a case study of a unique manuscript created by an itinerant musician and composer can offer broadly applicable insights into how musicians in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries sustained vast professional connections across Europe. Reaching beyond the needs of scholars interested in early modern musical networks, the dissemination of national musical styles or the vivacity of musical life in eighteenth-century Dublin, this book represents a versatile contribution to early modern music scholarship as a whole.