To trace John Ella’s life from his mid-twenties into his early forties is to witness a career develop and a young man change: from a junior, pretty anonymous orchestral player into a musician active at the centre of things, with a stake and say in many activities, and ambitions and visions for serious music-making. As the years elapsed Ella consolidated his playing and teaching, and increased his circle of amateur patrons. He added to his portfolio of activities, seeking out new openings and learning how to handle risk. And while gaining professional experience, he developed firm views on the music and performers around him, and on how London’s musical institutions were run. For Ella was, as much through force of character as through family background, an ambitious individual, determined to better himself financially and socially and to make some sort of mark in his chosen métier. Such aspirations were not unusual among young men of his class and occupation, but what separated Ella from many of his peers were his remarkable ability to sniff out and grasp opportunities, his realistic grasp of commercial matters, and his readiness to avoid or abandon projects that looked incapable of delivering adequate benefits.

Ella’s metamorphosis was not just a matter of youthful ambition: the times, which were nothing if not auspicious, played their part. Musical life was expanding, as the number of musicians offering their goods and services in the metropolis increased, along with the size and intensity of ‘consumer’ demand – much of it driven by a culturally aspirant and increasingly leisured, wealthy middle class – for enjoyable and ‘improving’ musical wares. This point is well demonstrated by the striking number of London concert institutions, the many ‘Mushroom Musical Societies’ (Ella’s words), that were begun during the 1830s: organizations such as the Societa Armonica (1830), the Sacred Harmonic Society (1832), the Choral Harmonists (1833), the Society of British Musicians (1834), and several concert series promoting chamber music (from 1835). There was also considerable growth in the provision of instruments and music lessons, as well as in the publishing and selling of not just music, but words about it too. It is no coincidence that this period saw ever more growth in music journalism, both in general newspapers and the emerging specialist music press.