1. Aesthetic liberalism Sarah Collins; Part I. Cultivation and/as Control: 2. Musical discipline and Victorian liberal reform Erin Johnson-Williams; 3. 'Brightening the lives of the people on Sunday': the National Sunday League and liberal attitudes towards concert promotion in Victorian Britain Simon McVeigh; 4. Music and mass education: cultivation or control? Rosemary Golding; Part II. Dissent, Individualism and Agency: 5. A musical presence among liberal thinkers: Eliza Flower and her circle, 1832–1845 Kate Bowan; 6. 'That more liberal mode of life': Rosa Newmarch, aestheticism, and queer listening in Victorian and Edwardian Britain Phillip Ross Bullock; Part III. Character and Emotion: 7. Style, character and revelation in Parry's Fourth Symphony Matthew Riley; 8. The Parrys and Prometheus Unbound: actualizing liberalism Phyllis Weliver; 9. Liberalism and Victorian musical sympathy Bennett Zon; 10. Music and character in the Victorian reception of Wagner: conducting the Philharmonic ca. 1855 Katherine Fry; 11. Afterword: liberalism in the round Peter Mandler.

'This book is a most welcome contribution to the renewed interest in liberalism and music culture. It reveals that Victorian liberal values were shaped by aesthetic debates in which the acts of performing and listening to music played an important role. The essays offer an absorbing illustration of the various tensions between music as recreation and music as a means of control, examining the role of human agency and the endeavour to experience life as an individual liberal subject.' Derek B. Scott, University of Leeds