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A Guide for Music Citation - Chicago/Turabian Style

This guide supports music students by providing examples and tips for Chicago/Turabian style citation. It covers all types of music sources, including texts, scores, and recordings.

M2s, Monuments of Music Scores

Follow the citation convention for citing a book in a series. See section 14.123 in the Chicago Manual https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org
Bibliography general order of elements:

Composer Last Name, First Name. Title of Score Volume. Edited by First Name Last Name. Title of Series (followed by) #. City: Publisher, Year.


Important: Usually the editor of the series is omitted. Series is not italicized. "Vol." is not necessary unless there is more than one number/part.
Though not appearing here, insert a hanging indent on every line after the first line.

Bibliography example: Eccles, John. Semele: An Opera. Edited by Richard Platt. Music Britannica: A National Collection of Music 76. London: Stainer and Bell, 2000.

Footnote example: Carlo Pallavicino, La Gerusalemme liberata, ed. Hermann Abert, Denkmäler deutscher Tonkunst 55 (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1916).

Substantial contributions on M2 guidance from Alica Stephens. 

If you cannot locate the editor of the volume on a title page, see if the volume has a foreword or introduction. The author of introductory comments is usually the editor of the volume.
If there is still no volume editor, you can insert a series editor name after the series title.
If your citation includes both a series editor and a volume number, insert the volume number after the series editor name, preceded by "vol." For more information on this practice, see the Turabian manual, 9th edition, section 17.1.5

Composer Last Name, First Name. Title of Score Volume. Title of Series, edited by First Name Last Name, #. City: Publisher, Year.

Important: Series is not italicized. 

Example in Bibliography:
Machaut, Guillaume de. The Works of Guillaume de Machaut. Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, edited by Leo Schrade, vols. 2-3*. Monaco : Editions de l'Oiseau-Lyre, 1956.

Example in Footnote: 
Guillaume de Machaut, The Works of Guillaume de Machaut, Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, ed. Leo Schrade, vols. 2-3* (Monaco : Editions de l'Oiseau-Lyre, 1956).

*Since the works of Machaut span the 2nd and 3rd volumes of the series, we acknowledge both volumes by inserting "2-3."

Generally, information about a subseries does not need to be included in a citation. In most cases, the main series title and its volume number give enough information for the reader to be able to locate the volume. 

Bibliography example: Finck, Heinrich. MessenMotetten und deutsche Lieder. Edited by Lothar Hoffmann-Erbrecht and Helmut Lomnitzer. Das Erbe deutscher Musik 70. Frankfurt: C.F. Peters, 1981.

The above volume is from a subseries of Das Erbe deutscher Musik. The subseries is called Ausgewaehlte Werke einzelner Meister. Within the subseries, this Finck volume is #8. However, a reader does not need to know about the subseries and the subseries volume number in order to locate the item, so subseries information is omitted from the citation. Instead, we only include information about the overall series (Das Erbe) and its volume, which is 70.

However, if you must cite a score that will be difficult for a user to find without extra information about a subseries, subseries volume number, or part number, go ahead and include it in the citation.

If no single composer is associated with the score you are citing, begin with the title of the volume instead. 

Bibliography example: Liber missarum. Edited by Rex Eakins. Collected Works, vol. 17, no 3. Ottawa: The Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2001.

For the above citation, the title page included "Vol. XVII/3." For the citation, this converts to: vol. 17, no. 3.

If you refer to only one piece within a volume that contains multiple compositions, enter the composition title before the individual volume title. If the composition is a song, surround the title in quotation marks. If the composition is a substantial work, such as a song cycle, full mass, symphony, etc, italicize the title. Examples provided in Turabian, section 17.1.8.3

Bibliography example:
Schneider, Friedrich. Die Jarhreszeiten. Text by T.L.A. Heinroth. In Topical Song Cycles of the Early Nineteenth Century. Edited by Ruth O. Bingham. Recent Researches in the Music of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, 37. Madison, WI: A-R Editions, 2003.

Footnote example:
Friedrich Schneider, Die Jarhreszeiten, text by T.L.A. Heinroth, in Topical Song Cycles of the Early Nineteenth Century, ed. Ruth O. Bingham, Recent Researches in the Music of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, 37 (Madison, WI: A-R Editions, 2003).

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Finding the info you need to cite M2 score
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