THE STUDY OF MUSIC in its social and cultural contexts has come a long way since I began to study eighteenth-century London concert life many years ago. Urban musicology was at that time no more than a shadow on the horizon. But it was already becoming apparent to many from other disciplines that music could be studied in all manner of new ways.

One of those was the late Cyril Ehrlich, who united the skills of an economic historian with a passion for nineteenth- and early twentieth-century music. It was on a joint plane trip, while returning from a European conference, that this book was born, during which my own interest in London music leapt forward a whole century.

Together with Leanne Langley, we devised a research project, ‘The Transformation of London Concert Life, 1880–1914’, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. This book would never have come to fruition without long and stimulating conversations with both Cyril and Leanne, over many years. I am immensely grateful to Leanne for her continuing support and invaluable advice.

It was always my intention to write a book that would reach beyond music historians to anyone fascinated by British culture in the years around 1900. I have avoided technical analyses in the hope that the significance of music – its centrality in London lives – will emerge in a far broader perspective. And while we can never hear with Edwardian ears, perhaps we might at least start to understand the varied music of this challenging era in quite different ways.

The book builds on a fast-growing body of research across many fields, and I am grateful to scholars and archivists too numerous to mention by name for their generous assistance and input. Some of the ideas in the book arose from seminars with students of Goldsmiths, University of London.

David Wright selflessly gave of his time and expertise in reading a late draft. Eva Mantzourani did sterling work on data collection relating to London concert life: a complementary set of data is available at www. music-in-edwardian-london.com.

I am extremely grateful to Michael Middeke at Boydell Press for so generously supporting the project over many years.