Music & Letters was first published in January 1920, under the initiative of its editor-in-chief, A. Fox Strangways. In his editorial for the opening volume, Fox Strangways wrote that ‘music expresses, defines and communicates emotions as language does thoughts’; the issue additionally carried a pastel portrait of Elgar by William Rothenstein, and a 2-quatrain poem, entitled ‘The Shyness of Beauty’, by Laurence Binyon. Ever since that first issue, Music & Letters has been at the forefront of scholarly and critically engaged writing about music, covering a wide and eclectic range of topics, and with a particular emphasis on encouraging fruitful dialogue between musicology and other disciplines. It is now an internationally leading peer-reviewed journal of musical scholarship.



To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the journal’s first appearance, the editors propose to run a prize competition to find the very best original articles in musicology. Submissions will be assessed through double-blind peer review, following which the prize-winning articles will be selected by the Music & Letters Editorial Board. The successful entries will be published in a special anniversary issue of the journal in 2020, and each of the winning authors will additionally receive a prize of £500.



The rules of the competition (also outlined at https://academic.oup.com/ml/pages/centenary_anniversary_prize_competition) are as follows:



1. Submission must be made via the journal’s online submission system, Manuscript Central, at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ml. Entries for the prize competition must be submitted to the marked repository on this website, which will be available when the competition opens (see point 9 below). Please note that retrospective entries will not be accepted.



2. In order to be eligible for consideration, articles need to be suitable for publication in Music & Letters; there are no restrictions on the individuals eligible to make submissions to the competition. The journal publishes scholarly articles of outstanding quality on all aspects of musicology, with a particular emphasis on interdisciplinarity and engagement with the broader cultural contexts in which music is situated. We do not impose a strict word limit on submissions, but published articles generally range from c.8,000 to c.15,000 words. Illustrative material, such as music examples, tables, plates, figures, and multimedia content, may be included provided it serves a specific purpose within the argument of the submission and can be accommodated within the presentation format of the journal.



3. Entries must follow the Instructions to Authors published online at www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/musicj/for_authors/index.html<http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/musicj/for_authors/index.html> and must also follow the Music & Letters Style Guide for Authors (see www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/musicj/style_guide.html<http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/musicj/style_guide.html>).



4. Entries will undergo a full process of double-blind peer review, as is usual for submission to the journal. Further details of the journal’s reviewing processes are available at  www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/musicj/for_authors/index.html<http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/musicj/for_authors/index.html>.



5. Entries judged not to be among the prize winners will be considered for publication in the journal in the normal way.



6. Before submission, authors must ensure that the relevant copyright permissions and licenses are obtainable; it is the author’s responsibility to secure and pay for permission to reproduce any material in copyright, and this must be done in a timely manner as soon as a submission is accepted. Successful entries will be published only once these permissions have been obtained.



7. The winning entries will be identified by a panel consisting of the journal’s editors and other members of the Music & Letters Editorial Board, taking into account the views of the external peer reviewers. The decision of the award panel is final and no correspondence can be entered into about the result.



8. No alternative prizes will be offered and OUP reserves the right to make changes to the prize at any time and without advance notice. In the unlikely event that, in the panel’s opinion, the material submitted is not of a suitable standard or too few submissions are received, no prize will be awarded.



9. The competition will open on 1 January 2018, and the deadline for submission is 31 May 2018. Results will be announced in autumn 2018. Publication will take place in 2020 (before the next REF deadline for scholars based in UK HEIs).





Prof. Rebecca Herissone

Professor of Musicology

Head of Division of Art History, Drama and Music

Director, AHRC Research Project, Musical Creativity in Restoration England

Co-Editor, Music & Letters



University of Manchester

Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama

Coupland Street

Manchester

M13 9PL

Tel: +44 (0)161 275 4980

Fax: +44 (0)161 275 4994

http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/subjectareas/music/research/musicalcreativity/