Circuit

A Québec-based journal specializing in contemporary music, Circuit was founded in Montréal in 1989 by Lorraine Vaillancourt and Jean-Jacques Nattiez and is published three times annually by the University of Montréal Press. The journal is named after the compositions Circuit I, Circuit II, and Circuit III (1972–73), by Serge Garant.

Circuit applies an academic approach to a wide range of topics related to contemporary (20th- and 21st-century) composition in Québec, North America, and Europe. Issues have been organized thematically, often around the work of a major composer, with the majority of articles written in French. Circuit's first issue in 1990 explored postmodernism; others have addressed electroacoustic music, opera, women composers, and audience and the phenomenon of listening; others have featured detailed portraits of Pierre Boulez, R. Murray Schafer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Gilles Tremblay, Iannis Xenakis and Frank Zappa.

Editors-in-chief have been Jean-Jacques Nattiez 1990–99, Jean Boivin 1999–2000, Michel Duchesneau 2000–06, and Jonathan Goldman beginning in 2006.