We are delighted to welcome your contribution(s) to Thinking Music: Global Sources for the History of Music Theory.  We ask that your contribution adhere to the following guidelines as closely as possible.  But do not fret about minor details of style or formatting, which will be addressed later by the editors.  You are also encouraged to read through several sample entries as models. If you have any questions or concerns, do not hesitate to contact us or your Associate Editor (if applicable).

Please keep in mind that the principal readership we envision for the volume comprises university students and readers with little to no prior familiarity with the specific material that they will be encountering. Scholarly debates and issues of interest to specialists (such as philology and scholarly controversies) should be omitted, or, if absolutely necessary, touched upon lightly. Please select your entry material accordingly. 

Please follow the latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style and employ US American spelling and punctuation throughout.

1.       Date of the Source.  Please provide us with an original date (or approximation range) of the source that you are citing using standard BCE/CE (“Before / Common Era”) distinctions. Examples: ca. 3rd Century BCE; 4th-5th centuries CE; 1479 CE.

If the source dating is completely unknown or otherwise undatable, leave this blank for now. Presumably the commentary will explain why this is so.

2.      Descriptive Title.  Provide a very short title/description of your entry. (Using an active voice in your title if possible.) Examples:

·      “al-Ḥaṣkafī discusses the categories of modes, types of musicians, and the affect of music”

·       “Zhu Zaiyu has an epiphany over twelve-tone equal temperament”

·      “A figured-bass partimento exercise”

·       “A remarkable set of 65 Chinese bells excavated from the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng”  

3.     Your Source.  Here you will provide the source that is the heart of your entry, be it an English translation of a text, an image or photograph, an instrument, an archeological finding, a metaphor or concept, or perhaps a notated musical example. If a text excerpt (or excerpts), please keep the total length to under 1000 words.

Images, diagrams, and other illustrations should be of high resolution. We will provide more detailed specifications from the publisher as we get closer to publication addressing questions of reproduction specifications and rights. Entries may contain up to ten images; if you require more than ten please reach out to the executive editors to discuss.

Translated texts that contain technical terms or concepts that might be unfamiliar to most readers may be defined or explained in optional glosses to the right of the excerpt. (Please see some of the sample entries for examples.) In general, such terms should be highlighted in a bold font. Wherever possible, please translate terms into English in the excerpt and explain them with a transliteration in the gloss. 

Note: in some cases it makes better sense to include a short introduction to the source before presenting it. This  works particularly well if the source begins with initially forbidding material.

Please try to avoid footnotes in your excerpts or commentary. Any references to secondary literature are best deferred to the commentary, as opposed to the gloss, and kept to an absolute minimum. But if some secondary source seems indispensable for understanding a given excerpt, it should be given using a short internal citation form (author, date, and page number). Those sources should appear in the ensuing Works Cited.

4. Original Source Text. We will include the original source text side-by-side for all texted materials. Please send these, formatted in Microsoft Word and broken up into paragraphs corresponding to the text in your entry, as a separate document along with your entry submission. We prioritize original scripts but providing transliterations in addition is also welcome.

5.     Full Source Citation.  At the end of your translated excerpt or image, provide a full bibliographic citation of the source or/and secondary sources of the excerpt (including original orthography of the title if desired and English transliteration). Indicate who is the translator, if known. Examples:

·      Nikomachos of Gerasa, Encheiridion harmonikēs [Handbook of Harmonics], ch 6; Carl Jan, Musici Scriptores Graeci. Leipzig: Teubner, 1895, 245-48. Translation from the Greek by David Cohen.

·      Zhu Zaiyu, Lüxue xinshuo (1584), in Yuelü quanshu (1606), as anthologized in Siku Quanshu (Beijing, 1784), juan 21:8r-9r. Translation from the Chinese by Lester Hu.

·      A moche stirrup spout bottle with a fine line depiction of musicians. Reproduction courtesy of the Larco Museum, Lima. No. Inv. ML013655.

·      Küçük Arut‘in Tanburi, untitled manuscript treatise [edvar], c. 1740. Matenadaran Institute, Yerevan, ms. 9340. Excerpted from Tanburî Küçük Artin, A Musical Treatise of the Eighteenth Century, ed. Eugenia Popescu-Judetz (Istanbul: Pan Yayıncılık, 2002), 80, 82, 88. Translation from the Turkish by Jacob Olley.

6.      Commentary.  Each source entry should be followed by a commentary that elucidates and explains to the reader the nature and importance of the primary source.  Please begin by providing brief historical, social, and / or biographical context, where available. Keep in mind that each commentary should be in the range of 700 to 1200 words, so obviously it is not possible to give a comprehensive exposition of the entry. The commentary should make clear why the particular source was selected to represent a given culture or practice ("why should we care"). Highlight what is important or special about the source, and describe its origin, cultural relevance, influence,  and reception, and how it represents an example of historical music theory or theorisation broadly construed (per the aims of our project outlined in our Prospectus).  To reference any secondary literature relevant to your source or its context, use a short internal citation (author, short title, pagination) that will then appear as a full citation in your bibliography. Again, please look at the model entries we have provided as inspiration for your own commentary. And do not hesitate to reach out to us with any questions or ideas that you would like to discuss in reference to your commentary. Cross references may be suggested (and inserted) by the editors of the anthology once all the entries have been received and approved.

7.    Your Full Name as author of the commentary should appear, aligned from right, at the end of the commentary.

8.   Further Reading.  Conclude with a list of about 5 to 10 secondary sources (and no more than 20) that you cite or recommend as additional scholarly readings related to your entry. Please follow the Chicago Manual of Style. Here we would like to encourage entry-level texts wherever possible.

9.    Works Cited.  Any secondary sources cited in the text that will not appear as further reading should be cited here. Please follow the Chicago Manual of Style. 

10. Keywords. Please provide 5-10 topical keywords describing your source. These should not include any proper names or place names, but rather concepts that might conceivably apply to multiple sources. "Mode," "Rhythm," "Cosmology," "Pedagogy," "Royal Patronage," "Court Music," "Healing," etc. are all possible keywords. "Pythagorean" is fine, but "Pythagoras" is not.  Geographical regions, cultural spheres, and political regimes will be included in a separate metadata and do not need to be included here. 

11.   Transliterations. Sinographic characters in the main text of a primary source should be transliterated in the native language of that source (i.e., in Japanese in a Japanese-language source, Korean in a Korean-language source), following the standard and/or prevalent academic method of transliteration in that language. Additionally, the original Sinographic characters should be shown in the gloss and, if relevant (e.g., if intra-East-Asian connectivity is at stake), further transliterated in according to their Modern Mandarin pronunciations in Pinyin (no indication of tones needed). E.g. If "盤渉調" appears in a Japanese-language source, it should be transliterated in the main text as banshikichō. It should then be glossed, with the gloss including the original Kanji that, if Sino-Japanese connectivity is particularly at stake in the historical context of the source or the upcoming commentary thereon, are then transliterated in Modern Mandarin, banshediao (there is no need to worry about variance in graphic forms, e.g, 涉 vs 渉).