The Late Romantic Era treats the period bounded by the 1848 revolutions and the outbreak of World War I. It examines several musical dimensions of the bourgeois cultural ascendancy of the second half of the 19th century - the growth of independent institutions of music-making, the consolidation of a standard classical repertory and the emergence of increasingly specific repertories of popular music, professional and amateur. Single chapters on particular countries or regions are framed by pairs of chapters on Vienna, Paris and the German cities. In an opening chapter Dr Samson places the later geographical surveys within a thematic context which embraces social and economic change, political ideology and the climate of ideas.