Biographical Note
Edmund Addison Bowles was born on March 24, 1925, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is a musicologist who specializes in the history of musical instruments, especially the timpani, as well as late-medieval musical iconography, historical performance practices, and the technological advancements of instrument building. In addition to numerous journal articles and encyclopedia entries, Bowles has published several books, including Timpani: A History in Pictures and Documents (Pendragon Press, 2002). He also edited the volume Computers in Humanistic Research: Readings and Perspectives (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1967). Between 1951 and 1955, he taught in the Humanities Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Bowles has also performed baroque timpani with early music ensembles. He studied the instrument with Lawrence White of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Hermann Ommen of the Hessian State Orchestra, as well as at the Berkshire Music Festival in Tanglewood. Bowles was the Vice President of the American Musical Instrument Society from 1984 to 1988. He also pursued a career at Bell Telephone Laboratories and worked at the IBM Corporation for 29 years.