Writing About Music: A Style Sheet from the Editors of 19th-Century Music

by D. Kern Holoman

How do you spell Rachmaninov?

Where do you place the hyphen in Hofmannsthal if it breaks across two lines? Is it premiere or première? The answers and much more can be found in a new, essential resource for authors, students, editors, concert producers—anyone who deals with music in print. An expanded version of the style sheet for the well-known journal 19th-Century Music , this small volume covers some of the thorniest issues of musical discourse: how to go about describing musical works and procedures in prose, the rules for citations in notes and bibliography, and proper preparation of such materials as musical examples, tables, and illustrations. One section discusses program notes, another explains the requirements of submitting manuscripts written on a word processor. An appendix lists common problem words.

Genres: Music

72 pages, Paperback

First published July 8, 1988

About the author

Dallas Kern Holoman is an American musicologist and conductor, particularly known for his scholarship on the life and works of Hector Berlioz. He is Distinguished Professor of Music emeritus at the University of California, Davis and Conductor emeritus of the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra.

Reviews

[Rodrigo Ruiz]

Having read a number of style manuals (CMOS, MLA, Oxford, etc.), this is really not that useful except in about a handful of specific instances. I probably could have saved myself some money.

[Mical]

God bless the human that put this together. And god bless the orgs that follow it clearly.