30 years of Context

This year is the thirtieth anniversary of the foundation of Context: A Journal of Melbourne Music Postgraduates. Congratulations to everyone involved!

Initially proposed by Michael Christoforidis, then a PhD student, the journal’s concept was developed by its first editors, all PhD or MMus candidates in musicology and composition: Faye Patton, Patricia Shaw, Gary Ekkel and Joerg Todzy. Their aim, as stated in the first issue in Winter 1991, was “to provide a forum for the publication of material concerning all aspects of music—musicology, composition, therapy, education—and to encourage discusson of a broad range of issues”. The very first issue was representative of what was to come: it had an imaginative cover designed by Ross Hazeldine at Red House (an extract from a score by Barry Conyngham), articles on Tippett, Conyngham, Boulez, Cage and Debussy, on twentieth-century aesthetics and on music theory in the eighteenth century, and incorporated compositions by David Young and Mary Finsterer.

Having now reached issue 46, the journal is fully refereed and published online. It still incorporates a mix of musicological studies, interviews with composers and extracts or complete scores of new works. Lyrebird Press will shortly publish all of the interviews with Australian composers that have appeared in Context. Beginning with Larry Sitsky in 1996, they are Elena Kats-Chernin, Chris Dench/Bruce Petherick, Julian Yu, Brenton Broadstock, Richard Mills, Nigel Westlake, Neil Kelly, Carl Vine, Elliott Gyger, Joseph Twist, Felicity Wilcox, Gordon Kerry, Liza Lim, Linda Kouvaras, Helen Gifford, Paul Stanhope, Stuart Greenbaum and Melody Eötvös. More details soon!