This book has been a very long time in the making. The debts, both personal and professional, to which it bears witness can neither be adequately repaid or enumerated. Those who have commented on the ideas or text of individual chapters include Kofi Agawu, Andrew Brown, Geoffrey Chew, Jonathan Dunsby, Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Alan Street, Alastair Williams and John Williamson. I also owe thanks to Paul and Christine Banks; Henri-Louis de La Grange and the Bibliothèque Gustav Mahler, Paris; Stephen Watson of Skate Press, Cambridge, for the creation of the font for the rhythmic notation within the text; and all my colleagues at Lancaster University.

Three people above all others have, however, ensured that this labour has finally come to its end. The first is the supervisor of the doctoral dissertation from which this book sprang, Derrick Puffett, whose encouragement and acutely perceptive comments were constant throughout the time I was his student. The second is Anthony Pople, who has not only commented on the text, but has also, as my Head of Department, greatly helped me to assign to it the time needed for its completion. Lastly, of course, I cannot begin to describe the part played by Alison over the years that we have both lived with this project. Without her, the best of what follows would not have been written at all.