Martin Iddon is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Leeds. He previously lectured at University College Cork and Lancaster University, and studied composition and musicology at the Universities of Durham and Cambridge. His musicological research largely focuses on post-war music in Germany and the United States of America, and has been published in numerous leading journals, including Musical Quarterly, Twentieth-Century Music and the Contemporary Music Review. His music has been performed in Europe, North America and Australasia, and has been featured on BBC Radio 3, Radio New Zealand and the Österreichischer Rundfunk.

• Introduction: music after catastrophe; Part I. The Accidental Serialists: 1. Arrivals; 2. Schools, excursus: October 1954, Donaueschingen and Cologne; Part II. A Stranger in Paradise?: 3. Pre-cursors; 4. The Cage shock; 5. In Cage's wake; Conclusion: a stranger in paradise?; Chronology of major events at Darmstadt, 1946–61.