Foundations of Music History is a presumptuous title. I would therefore ask the reader to bear in mind that it represents a make-shift solution to the problem of finding a more precise and less bombastic one. As compensation for my failure, or at least in an attempt to make it pardonable, all I can offer is a few admonitory assurances. The following historiographical reflections, which were occasioned, or rather provoked, by the obvious and disproportionate lack of theory in my own peripheral discipline as compared to the veritable welter of theoretical writing in general history, sociology and epistemologically orientated philosophy, are not meant to be an introduction to the basic facts of music history. Nor are they intended as a textbook of historical method in the manner of Bernheim's work. Still less do they constitute a philosophy of history or an ideological critique in the respective traditions of Hegel and Marx. Their closest model might be Johann Gustav Droysen's unsurpassed lecture series of 1857, Historik.

It is difficult, however, not to become involved with Marxist ideological critique, since in this field of study – or at least in the field it claims to study – choosing a topic is always inextricably bound up with deciding in favour of one of the various contesting positions it encompasses.