The standard model of musical transmission, in which composers embody their intentions in works which they encode in scores which performers (and scholars in their imagination) decode as accurately as possible for audiences, is unpicked in the light of the evidence of recorded performance. It is replaced with a model that recognizes the large extent to which performances trigger the generation of musical meaning in the minds of listeners, and the extent to which changes in performance style cause those meanings to change. Some implications for thought about music are considered.