A History of Electronic Music at the University of Iowa

Abstract

This article provides a close study of the University of Iowa Electronic Music Studios. The point of such a detailed account of one studio is to shed light on activity within the field of electronic music that previously did not occupy a place in the literature. Few of the studios listed in Hugh Davies's International Electronic Music Catalog have received detailed attention. Until a wider range of close studies that pay attention to the particularities of individual cases becomes available, it will be difficult to do the comparative work necessary to gain an appropriately textured overall account of the development of electronic music in the post-war period. As these detailed studies, based largely on first-hand documentation, increase the resolution of electronic music's history, they may highlight significant but previously unnoticed, or at least under-appreciated, patterns in the development of electronic music and act as an effective barometer of changing trends.