In the following pages Michael Benson traces the history and changing fortunes (and indeed, changing titles) of the musical enterprise that is now Bedford Choral Society. Several historical narratives of parallel institutions in other towns and cities of Britain have been published, many of them less thoroughly researched and less comprehensive than the present work, but all reflect the enthusiasm and determination of the participating musicians. Bedford's society is one of the earliest ones of its type, and its history is both national and local: it exemplifies larger trends in Britain's musical life, but it is also individual because Bedford's geographical and cultural position provided some unique opportunities, enabling more ambitious events to be presented than in other towns of comparable size.

For the origins of the phenomenon of societies in Britain devoted to musical performance, of the type represented by the Bedford Choral Society, we need to look to two strands in the musical life of London in the late decades of the seventeenth century. There was, in the first place, the establishment of musical concerts both public and private. John Banister's public concerts during the 1670s took place in a series of dedicated concert venues, but no less important was the parallel growth of private concerts, often mixing leading professional players and singers with talented amateurs. It was, rather literally, a matter of ‘gentlemen and players’: it was considered unseemly for young ladies to perform (though not so reprehensible as their appearance in public events), and the amateurs were (as far as the evidence goes) drawn mainly from the professional classes – lawyers, clergy and the like. This is not surprising in view of the costs of musical instruments and music, but the patronage of the concerts was not always so exclusive: one private famous concert series took place in the room above Thomas Britton's coal warehouse in Clerkenwell. In the eighteenth century private concerts burgeoned not only in London but in provincial towns and cities: the musical society at Salisbury was one of the most successful, with concerts every fortnight, including more ambitious ones on fullmoon nights when visiting players were able to travel from Bath or Oxford. The cathedral cities were at a particular advantage because they had a pool of resident professional musicians: the organists of the cathedral and the larger churches and the lay clerks of the cathedral choirs.