HMU111: Introduction to Music and Society

University of Toronto Libraries: Citation Styles

University of Toronto Libraries provides a helpful orientation for citing in all styles including MLA. Follow the links under MLA for thorough guides to citing in MLA.

The predominant guide for citing your sources in musicology is the Chicago Manual of Style. The 17th edition is available as of Sep. 1, 2017. 

The CMoS can be a challenge to use if you're not familiar with it, so the library created a citation guide with music specific examples throughout. It includes examples of footnotes/endnotes and bibliographic entries, along with links to the CMoS if you'd prefer to read the rules in their entirety. It also includes samples with helpful descriptors identifying the various elements needed for citations, as with the illustrations below:

Example of a footnote:

1 Author or Editor First Name Last Name, Title in Italics (City of Publication: Name of Publisher, Year Published), Page number.

1 Peter Williams, J.S. Bach: A Life in Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 34.

Example of a bibliographic entry:

Author or Editor Last Name, First Name. Title in Italics. City of Publication: Name of Publisher, Year Published.

Williams, Peter. J.S. Bach: A Life in Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.