Web page updated February 22, 2007
© 2007 by Edgar Rust
Music For The Love Of It is written for adult amateur and professional musicians. It aims to communicate solid information and stimulating ideas in an accessible style, and to promote amateur participation in the arts, especially music-making. If you want to discuss your ideas for an article, please call Ted Rust, editor, at 510/654-9134, preferably 9am-5pm PDT.
Our typical readers are mature, well educated, and musically literate. Some are highly accomplished musicians, all are great enthusiasts. Many of them have taken up or returned to music as adults, and are eager to make up for lost time. They include choral, orchestral, operatic, chamber, jazz, rock and folk musicians as well as composers and conductors. Please write to interest musicians in general, even if your topic is specialized.
Here are some themes to which we often return:
In addition, here are some new topics that we would love for somebody to explore:
We encourage strong opinions, but will not publish pans or rants. Please support your negative opinions with specific evidence and temper them with constructive observations. Please do not use your article to promote a concert, product or service: we will be happy to describe commercial offerings of interest to our readers in the "In Box" section, or sell you a display ad.
Please try to use standard American English. The Chicago Manual of Style, The American College Dictionary and the New Harvard Dictionary of Music are reasonable guides. You may adopt a friendly and informal manner where it is appropriate, as in first-person narratives or interviews. Italian, French or German musical terms commonly used in music scores may be left in their original language, but when in doubt please translate.
Try to illustrate your main points with quotations, pictures, anecdotes, dialogue or music quotes. We can typeset music notation and can scan sharp photos or graphics.
Length is flexible, but most of our readers prefer short articles (800 words or less).
Please include a brief autobiography.
Deadlines are normally the first of February, April, June, August and October. Please let the editor know if you have something in the works.
Writers may submit written queries, draft or completed articles and related graphics to
We will try to respond to all submissions, although we cannot always do so immediately.