Why Eighteenth-Century Music? Thirty years ago, eighteenth-century music research represented a scholarly vanguard: the field was at the forefront in source studies, in performance practice, in investigating local music history and even in its willingness to think critically about the ways it had defined itself historically. These successes were in no small part responsible for a fundamental shift in musicological studies, even if this shift, fed by methodologies derived from literary and critical theory, was more apparent in writings on nineteenth-century music. Perhaps the field of eighteenth-century music studies was slow to reposition itself in this new intellectual environment. Or perhaps there was a feeling that this music ‘could look after itself’, that it is the common property of all musicologists. Whatever the reason, research into music of the eighteenth century was eclipsed in terms of the number of publications, conferences and doctoral dissertations.