‘Music in Context’ is a book series for the Cambridge University Press music list. The series General Editor was J. P. E. Harper-Scott, and Julian Rushton is Joint Founding Editor. For information on current volumes in the series, see the CUP website.

Series description

The aim of Music in Context is to illuminate specific musical works, repertoires, or practices in historical, critical, socio-economic, or other contexts; or to illuminate particular cultural and critical contexts in which music operates through the study of specific musical works, repertoires, or practices. A specific musical focus is essential, while avoiding the decontextualization of traditional aesthetics and music analysis. The series title invites engagement with both its main terms; the aim is to challenge notions of what contexts are appropriate or necessary in studies of music, and to extend the conceptual framework of musicology into other disciplines or into new theoretical directions.

The length of each monograph should not exceed 90,000 words, and should not fall far below c. 80,000 without consultation with the editor and the Press. Volumes should normally include some illustration and music examples, the extent of which should be discussed with the editor and the Press at an early stage. Volumes will normally be single authored, but collaborative authorship is certainly not excluded.

The internal design of individual volumes will vary because of the nature of the materials discussed. Each book should make an original contribution to its chosen topic and be a foundation for future research in similar and related fields, but also potentially be useful to either undergraduate or postgraduate students.

Authors interested in contributing to the series Music in Context should submit a detailed proposal to Katharina Brett at Cambridge University Press. The proposal should contain a justification for the project and an outline plan, with provisional word-counts for each chapter. The Press has prepared a guide to preparing book proposals, which may be read here. The length of up to 90,000 words should allow for the bibliography and index. Authors may provide a CV and sample writings, but these are not required in the first instance. However, in some cases, before reaching a decision to publish, a CV and sample chapters may be required.

Books in the series (to 2021)

• Simon P. Keefe, Mozart’s Requiem: Reception, Work, Completion
• J. P. E. Harper-Scott, The Quilting Points of Musical Modernism: Revolution, Reaction, and William Walton
• Nancy November, Beethoven’s Theatrical Quartets: Opp. 59, 74 and 95
• Rufus Hallmark, Frauenliebe und Leben: Chamisso’s Poems and Schumann’s Songs
• Anna Zayaruznaya, The Monstrous New Art: Divided Forms in the Late Medieval Motet
• Helen Deeming and Elizabeth Eva Leach (eds.), Manuscripts and Medieval Song: Inscription, Performance, Context
• Emily Kilpatrick, The Operas of Maurice Ravel
• Roderick Chadwick and Peter Hill, Olivier Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux: From Conception to Performance
• Catherine A. Bradley, Polyphony in Medieval Paris: The Art of Composing with Plainchant
• Daniel M. Grimley, Delius and the Sound of Place
• Nicole Grimes, Brahms’s Elegies: The Poetics of Loss in Nineteenth-Century German Culture
• Owen Rees, The Requiem of Tomás Luis de Victoria (1603)
• Jane Hatter, Composing Community in Late Medieval Music: Self-Reference, Pedagogy, and Practice
• Daniel Elphick, Music behind the Iron Curtain: Weinberg and his Polish Contemporaries