ONE of the pleasures of university teaching is to experience the dictum that teachers learn from students as much as students learn from teachers. The content and format of this book have their origins in a postgraduate course I taught for many years at Cardiff University, aimed at students from a wide disciplinary background, history and European studies as well as music. The initial intention was to study the role of music in society in Vienna around 1800, the time of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. That soon changed to curiosity about other periods in Viennese musical history, and the idea was born of looking at music in the city a hundred years earlier and a hundred years later as well. From one academic year to the next, successive groups of students responded enthusiastically to this approach, fascinated by the details of musical life in each of the periods, the differences and the continuities. Many also lamented the absence of a book on the subject. In the most basic sense, therefore, my gratitude to these students is fundamental; without them, this volume would never have existed.

A few years elapsed before I was able to turn the idea into reality – a book on music in Vienna that had a broad remit but also engaged with details. I was fortunate enough to be awarded a Major Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust for the period 2013–15 that enabled me to concentrate entirely on the project. I am grateful to the trust for their interest and their implicit view that it fitted in with one of their guiding principles, that funded research should not only reflect the aspiration and curiosity of the individual, but should be accessible and appeal beyond conventional disciplinary boundaries.

Many individuals have helped with the preparation of this book in various capacities, as scholars, librarians, linguists, referees, IT experts and proofreaders, and it is a pleasure to acknowledge their interest as well as their expertise, while absolving them of any responsibility for the misrepresentations and errors that remain. John Deathridge, Simon Keefe and Jan Smaczny were early and willing supporters; several colleagues at Cardiff University with different interests from my own – David Beard, Keith Chapin, Kenneth Hamilton, John O'Connell and Clair Rowden – have, through casual conversation, caused me to pursue, revise and reconsider certain ideas.