About This Journal
Musical Offerings is an online, bi-annually published, undergraduate journal of musicology whose mission is to publish articles on any area of musicology, ethnomusicology, music history, or church music history. Every article published in the journal is authored by an undergraduate student and undergoes a thorough blind-review process by professionals in the field.
The journal is the result of a goal to provide students with an incentive to excel in historical research and writing and to have the opportunity to become a published writer as an undergraduate student. Highly researched, relevant submissions are accepted for consideration from undergraduate students in any area of study.
The first issue began in 2009 with a consideration of articles submitted by junior and senior students studying music history at Cedarville University. Out of approximately thirty articles under consideration, three were chosen by a panel of five reviewers for inclusion in the pilot issue published in spring 2010.
The title of the journal, Musical Offerings, with its subtitle, Soli Deo Gloria, was selected by the music history and literature students at Cedarville University. The title was chosen to embrace several meanings. The principal title, Musical Offerings, comes from a late instrumental work by Johann Sebastian Bach. Although that work is not sacred in nature, its title suggests that it is meant as an offering. The subtitle is also inspired by Bach; the Baroque composer was well known for including at the end of his compositions “S.D.G.,” an abbreviation for Soli Deo Gloria—for the Glory of God Alone. We felt that this subtitle was a fitting pair with Musical Offerings, as the publishing institution, Cedarville University, likewise aims to reflect its strong commitment to Christ. By using titles that reference roughly the middle of the spectrum of the Western classical tradition, the journal embraces the full scope of musicological study.
Musical Offerings is an open access journal, which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Links to the journal appear on the Cedarville University DigitalCommons website for free and open access by any interested party. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI (Budapest Open Access Initiative) definition of open access. Authors retain the copyrights of their articles, which are governed by Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC-ND.
Musical Offerings is indexed and available in full text at RILM, an international electronic database for music literature. Musical Offerings is also indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, in EBSCO's Music Index, and in EBSCO's Music Index with Full Text database.
A special acknowledgement is due to Beth Cram Porter, Chair of Cedarville University’s Department of Music and Worship, for her advice and leadership in this project. Special thanks are also due to the librarians and staff of the Centennial Library at Cedarville University for assistance with publishing the journal in DigitalCommons.
Cedarville University Mission Statement:
“Cedarville University transforms lives through excellent education and intentional discipleship in submission to biblical authority.”
