Fifty Years of Electronic and Electroacoustic Music at the Ghent University

From Decoder Magazine:

The Belgian city of Ghent – now the country’s second-largest city – lies between Paris and Cologne. In 1963, some time after the formation of both the Cologne’s Studio for Electronic Music and the GRM, the Institute for Psychoacoustic and Electronic Music (IPEM) was formed at the Rijksuniversiteit Gent (RUG), with the help of Belgian Radio and Television (BRT). The studio was so named to represent its two purposes: scientific research and artistic discovery. Created to compete with the other public electroacoustic studios across Europe, the IPEM was devoted to the design and creation of electronic devices as well as the production of electronic and acousmatic compositions. In what can only be attributed to sheer coincidence, the IPEM was geographically located between the NWDR and the GRM, and it also freely employed the styles of both famous studios. In fact, an early composition produced by the first IPEM artistic director – Louis De Meester’s “Incantations” – freely combines concrète sound with electronically generated tones. The IPEM borrowed the best of both sound-worlds.