An organist with a doctorate in music from Oxford University, Burney owed his fame to his studies of the history of music, in which the journey he made to Italy in 1770 played a fundamental part. His home was a meeting place for musicians and singers passing through the English capital, and Burney also formed friendships with influential artists and men of letters, including Garrick, Gibbon, Boswell, Johnson and Captain Cook. With an excellent grounding in history and art, Burney was in fact in touch with members of the most enlightened circles of contemporary London: Lady Montagu, Reynolds (who painted a fine portrait of him) and Burke (editor of The Annual Register).

Leaving for the Continent in 1770, he traveled through France to Italy, where in each city he made contact with prominent figures and visited libraries and institutions, paying meticulous attention to conservatories, theaters, museums and private and public collections. As a genuine pioneer of musicological studies he seized the slightest opportunity to gather material for the historical work he planned to write. His Present State of Music in France and Italy. Or, The journal of a Tour through those Countries undertaken to collect Materials for A General History of Music (Londra, 1771) bears witness, with its wealth of anecdotes, observations of costume and portraits, to a great capacity to grasp the less conventional aspects of the countries he traveled through.