The Westdeutscher Rundfunk (West German Radio) in Cologne (WDR studio), one of the first institutional electronic music studios to be established in either Europe or the United States, has never before been the topic of an entire monograph. Jennifer Iverson’s Electronic Inspirations finally fills this vacuum. Iverson’s groundbreaking analysis is based on the idea that there is a pressing need to revise several persistent narratives surrounding the WDR studio, the Darmstadt Summer Courses, and the role of Karlheinz Stockhausen. This book invites us to turn our attention to a larger network of persons and institutions that fostered new music and electronic music in the postwar era.
Over the decades, several international music laboratories have been the subject of research.1 The WDR studio, however, has received little attention prior to Iverson’s publication, barring some short histories presented in textbooks, and scattered essays by scholars, mostly in German.2 Historians, musicologists,...
University of California Press