About This Journal
Music & Musical Performance: An International Journal is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal devoted to the study of music across historical periods, traditions, and disciplines, with particular attention to the relationships among musical works, performance, and listening.
The journal was launched in early 2022 by an international consortium of music scholars, performers, and composers. It incorporates, as its first issue, the material that appeared in November 2019 in the short-lived International Journal of the Study of Music and Music Performance. That earlier journal was part of the now-defunct Open Music Library.
Music & Musical Performance: An International Journal is peer-reviewed; its chief and advisory editors represent a wide range of musical interests. It is published online and open-access, in conjunction with Digital Commons and the University of New Hampshire library system. Its editorial and advisory boards are broadly international. It welcomes contributions in any language, ideally accompanied by a reliable English translation. (It will evaluate both the original and the translation; if a translation is not submitted and the article is accepted, members of the editorial team will work with the author on locating a capable translator.)
Most of all, MMP seeks to bridge the worlds of academic discourse and of performers and listeners. With this aim in mind, it encourages contributions that are more essayistic than is typical in existing journals. It also welcomes reactions to recorded and live performances. As an online journal, MMP can easily incorporate color illustrations, video, and sound files. These enrichments help provide a forum for discussing music as it is practiced—and has been practiced—in many times and places and for widely differing purposes.
We strongly urge scholars—and (more generally) eager commentators on music—from many lands and cultures to join us in our effort to maintain a lively and varied forum for the discussion of music and its multiple uses and meanings in human life. Examples of themes the journal encourages contributors to explore include:
- Music and ritual
- Music and words (including opera, other theater music, and film)
- Music as notated (e.g., a published score) vs. music as a performance or a recording
- Music as heard or read: hermeneutic, embodied, expressive, and other possible “ways”
- Centers and peripheries in musical life and musical composition: in earlier eras and now
- Music and the life cycle (e.g., children's music, student music, wedding music, music and the family home, music and the elderly, music and death/burial/mourning)
- Music and social/political life: music of political solidarity and protest, music and the workplace, music and commerce (the shopping mall, radio/TV advertising), music and the political process (political parties and rallies, TV news, etc.)
Again, we remind potential contributors that they should feel free to offer writings that are somewhat unusual in format (for example, a string of short observations) and that, as appropriate, make imaginative use of audio and visual materials. Most of all, we encourage work that can speak to a wide range of people—in many lands—who are interested in how and why music has been made, heard, and debated in the past and continues to be today.
The journal appears under the auspices of a group of chief editors and a board of advisory editors from diverse fields and countries. Submissions, questions, and comments should be sent to any of our chief editors.