If you’re a music student currently enrolled in a university or a high schooler thinking about pursuing music in college, you will have to write at least one paper at some point. Part of that process is learning how to correctly cite your sources in the footnotes and bibliography and apply correct grammar and manuscript preparation procedures using the Chicago Manual of Style, which is the most commonly used citation format in literature about music. You may also be familiar with the term “Turabian” – Kate Larimore Turabian (1893-1987) was an educator who simplified Chicago style specifically for students and researchers and wrote a guide titled A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. As guidelines for the Chicago style have changed over time, her book has also been updated, with the 9th edition (2018) being the most current. Most university libraries will have a copy of the Turabian, but if you especially enjoy the process of researching and writing or complete the majority of your schoolwork away from the library, I highly recommend purchasing your own copy of her book.
In addition to the Turabian, there are a number of other resources to familiarize yourself with when working on citations for your paper. The Chicago Manual of Style has a website, which includes a citation quick-guide that is free to access. To access the entire manual, however, you either need to purchase a subscription or log in via your university library (most schools have subscriptions). A quick Google search for “Chicago style” or “Chicago style music” will also yield dozens of helpful articles that librarians from around the country have put together, such as the University of Saskatchewan, McGill University, and DePauw University.
Citing your sources is crucial for numerous reasons. First, it gives credit where credit is due. It also demonstrates that you read, understand, and applied relevant literature from trusted authors, therefore adding credibility to your paper. Though it may seem meticulous and sometimes frustrating to ensure the information is always listed in the same order, the citation itself also contains the relevant information needed to find the source should future researchers wish to use it.
Rather than writing my own guide for you to use, here are a bunch of sites that already have guides for the Chicago/Turabian style and answer many of the music-specific questions I have asked over the years. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when these sites are just as informative, so here they are all in one place!
- General information
- Purdue
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- Mars Hill University
- Indiana University Bloomington: In addition to general information, this page also includes some good formatting examples specific to music.
- University of Minnesota: Also includes citation examples for program notes
- Citing recordings: Includes examples for both streaming audio and physical media
- Capitalization schemes and titles of works (directions on whether or not to capitalize the key of a piece, individual movements, etc.)
There are a number of websites that you can plug information into and it will generate a citation. If you choose to use these, however, I recommend double-checking the citations they produce. These tools, while they can reduce the amount of time you spend working on your footnotes or bibliography, don’t always have full access to the source you are citing, can sometimes put information in the wrong order or leave something out, and may not always be updated according to the most recent style guide. Zotero is usually pretty solid (and it’s free!), but even it may not be up to date with all the intricacies that writing about music requires. Use discretion and double-check your work!
I hope this blog answered some of your questions regarding Chicago/Turabian style! Let me know if there’s anything else I can help out with in the comments, and happy researching!
