Music & Letters

• 1. Introduction

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  Music & Letters has been asking hard questions about music since 1920. Not questions a casual listener might ask, but the kind that keep scholars awake: where did this melody come from, what does this manuscript reveal, how does one composer's work connect to another's across centuries? Founded by A. H. Fox Strangways, the journal set out to give serious music research a home when few such homes existed. It has been doing that ever since, published by Oxford University Press and arriving in readers' hands four times a year. What kept it alive through more than a century of wars, cultural upheaval, and shifting academic fashions? And who were the people who shaped its voice across those decades?

• 2. Fox Strangways and the Founding

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  A. H. Fox Strangways launched Music & Letters in 1920 and held the editor-in-chief post for seventeen years. That is a long stretch to steer any publication, long enough to establish a character, a set of standards, and a readership that would outlast the founder. Fox Strangways stepped down in 1937, handing the journal to Eric Blom. The trust Fox Strangways built during those years gave the journal the credibility it needed to survive a transition in leadership without losing its footing.

• 3. Eric Blom's Two Tenures

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  Eric Blom took the editorship in 1937 and held it until 1950, a run of thirteen years that covered the Second World War and its aftermath. His connection to the journal did not end there. After Richard Capell served as editor from 1950 to 1954, Blom returned for a second term and guided the publication until 1959. Few editors of any academic journal have served two separate stints at the helm. Blom's return suggests the journal's trustees saw in him a steadying hand the publication still needed, a continuity with its founding ambitions.

• 4. A Succession of Voices

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  J. A. Westrup took over in 1959 and served the longest unbroken editorial tenure in the journal's history, holding the post until 1976. After Westrup, the journal moved to a co-editorship model. Denis Arnold and Edward Olleson shared the role from 1976 to 1980, followed by Nigel Fortune and Olleson from 1981 to 1986. Fortune then continued alongside John Whenham until 1992, and then with Tim Carter until 1999. Fortune's role stretched well past 1999; he remained co-editor until 2008, making him one of the most enduring presences in the journal's twentieth-century history.

• 5. The Music & Letters Trust

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  Oxford University Press publishes the journal, but the journal itself sponsors something beyond its pages: the Music & Letters Trust. The Trust makes cash awards twice a year, in amounts that vary, to support research in the music field. Those awards represent a direct investment in the kind of scholarship the journal was built to publish. A researcher receiving one of those grants might one day submit the work that results back to the same journal that funded its beginnings.