This book takes the themes and approaches of Professor Cyril Ehrlich's pathbreaking work on British social history in music as its inspiration. In sixteen substantial new essays, all specially commissioned from cultural and musical historians, it embraces the music marketplace, piano culture, musicians work patterns, music institutions and audiences, concert and repertoire history, issues in performance, criticism and reception, gender, and national and urban identities all with a clear focus on art music traditions (significantly under-treated by music scholars in this area). The cultural importance of serious music, from Belfast to Calcutta, has long been assumed for the period but rarely demonstrated. Here it is central, interwoven with the social and economic realities confronting music people in Britain across the 19th century.