This chapter lays the groundwork for the rest of the book by outlining the central challenge in understanding virtuosity: problems of definition and location. I discuss five influential paradigms that seek to address these problems, critiquing each of them in turn from the standpoints of phenomenology, media history, and (at the conclusion) performance theory. Although I am critical of these paradigms, I work to show their insights as well as their inadequacies, for they are not without merit, and the scholars who employ them (whether implicitly or explicitly) have made many valuable contributions. Each paradigm thus finds a place within my theorization, but as only one virtuosity among many rather than as a model for the phenomenon in its entirety. To be sure, these methodological arguments do not straightforwardly solve the problems of virtuosity, nor are they meant to do so. This is because, in many ways, virtuosity is the set of problems that surrounds it. The complex, shifting relationships that make virtuosity what it is are the same ones that trouble so many.