Myles W. Jackson, <i>Broadcasting Fidelity: German Radio and the Rise of Early Electronic Music</i> Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2024. Pp. 344. ISBN 978-0-691-26072-3. £38.00 (hardcover).

Aficionados of electronic music likely associate the genre with Germany: Stockhausen's 1950s serial sine tones at Cologne's Studio for Electronic Music; 1960s Krautrock of Amon Dl II et al.; Kraftwerk's poppy 1970s synthesisers; post wall-fall beats of Berlin's techno.The author of Broadcasting Fidelity, Myles Jackson, historian of science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, frequented Berlin techno clubs, which become his portal into a history of electronic music experimentation in Germany and the first electro-acoustic instrument, the Trautonium.Broadcasting Fidelity is a comprehensive history of electronic sound generation for music, drawing together early radio technologies, the quest for distortionless broadcasting, historical discussions about transmissible music and radiophonic composition, and the impact of political contexts.In the conclusion, Jackson states that he used two pieces of material culture, early German radio and the Trautonium, to piece together bits of culture that some might consider unrelated.In relation to these twin objects, he builds links among musical aesthetics; theories and practices in physiological, physical and electrical engineering; techniques of electronic music; and the role of politics.Contained within is a study of an inventor, Friedrich Trautwein, and of an instrument, which today has but one sole expert player and is destined for the instrument graveyard of the music museum.The Trautonium emerged from a pioneer experimental spirit and, through the radio, conveyed innovative sounds into homes.As Jackson expounds in meticulous detail, this involved a complex of inventors, scientists, experimenters, visionaries, engineers, physicists, sensory physiologists, linguists, musicologists, sound artists, music academies and the electrical industry.The study begins with a depiction of early radio in the Weimar Republic.A concert broadcast on 29 October 1923 marked the opening of the Berlin radio station, first of many regional stations, each more or less open to experimenting with the possibilities of the medium.Jackson spins many technical and aesthetic questions, clarifying how much push there was to innovate.For example, the Berlin radio experimental laboratory, described as a condensation point for electrical engineering, radio research and electrical music, provided microphones, loudspeakers and amplifiers for play.Trautwein, a lecturer in music from 1929, tinkered at the radio lab.Born in Wrzburg in 1888, he trained in electrical engineering at the Technical University in Karlsruhe, studied law and physics and joined the Reich Post Ministry after the First World War.Through its telegraph service, he helped set