The name Paul Bowles does not need an introduction in the literary world. Celebrated by many for his classics such as The Sheltering Sky (1949) and The Delicate Prey (1949), he secured a place for himself in the pantheon of great American writers. Bowles, however, is known to far fewer for his musical accomplishments, even though he was a distinctive and original composer as well.

While a substantial body of research has been dedicated to Bowles the author, little has been written about his music despite the fact that Bowles, a unique polymath, considered himself to be primarily a composer. Born and raised in New York City, Bowles demonstrated his musical proclivities early in his life and subsequently had a busy composing career throughout the 1930s and 1940s. He created works in almost every musical genre up until the late 1940s when he settled in Morocco’s artistic city of Tangier, where he spent the rest of his long life. During the latter period, his productivity as a composer slowed considerably as he concentrated more on his literary career.