Delia in 1965
Delia in Pink
Version 2.34, ?? October 2013
(what's new?)
The wikidelia is new!
| Contents |
Delia in 1965 |
Delia in Pink |
Although her revolutionary sounds are familiar to over a hundred million people through the theme to the television series "Doctor Who" and the seminal album of 1969 "An Electric Storm" she was hardly ever credited and her name is almost unknown. The bulk of her musical production and atmospheric sound for television and radio programmes is on tape in the BBC Sound Archives. After her death, 267 tapes from her attic as well as a box of her papers were consigned to the archive, then in 2007 donated to Manchester University Center for Screen Studies who have digitized them but only three new tracks have been released since then, on compilation albums with music from other composers. Most will probably never be heard again. Mark Ayres made a catalogue of the BBC archives and of the attic tapes but neither has been published.
I originally compiled this chronology from what I could find of Delia Derbyshire's music from material found on the web, adding info from people contacted by email. For biographical material and lists of commercial albums containing her music consult the canonical site delia-derbyshire.org.
Where I have been able to find a date the order here is chronological, though for many pieces I have only seen a passing mention of their existence and have had to guess roughly where to insert them into the list. Others are inserted at random. I am always pleased to receive suggestions for better ordering, or news of other material of which I am ignorant, as well as reports of errors in the site contents, however minor.
Martin Guy, <martinwguy@gmail.com>
There is some new stuff here:
"I was always into the theory of sound even in the 6th form. The physics
teacher refused to teach us acoustics but I studied it myself and did very
well. It was always a mixture of the mathematical side and music. Also,
radio had been my love since childhood because I came from just a humble
background with relatively few books and radio was my education. It was
always my little ambition to get into the BBC.
The only way into the workshop was to be a trainee studio
manager. This is because the workshop was purely a service department
for drama. The BBC made it quite clear that they didn't employ composers
and we weren't supposed to be doing music."
-- Delia, in the
Hutton interview, 24 Feb 2000
Delia joined the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1962.
Delia's BBC Studio |
Delia cutting tape |
I have no date for the following pieces. Please get in touch if you know more about any of them.
A version of Bach's "Air on a G String,
"which she dismissed as "rubbish", though it has a fair number of admirers."
Released on 10" vinyl "Music from The BBC Radiophonic Workshop" by Rephlex as CAT147LP (2003)
Released on vinyl "BBC Radiophonic Music" by BBC Records as REC25M
(1971 and 19 May 2003) and on CD as REC25MCD (26 November 2002)
Her papers contain detailed notes and tape labels for the creation of sound for what appears to be a two-act play produced in collaboration with F. Chagrin and S. Brown. This may be Sandy Brown, composer of the score for "Searching".
"pretty much defies description and is all the better for it; you don't
want to have to resort to mere words to describe such a perfect sound,
utterly deserving the self-definitive title Delia so knowingly gave it."
-- Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
It can be heard as the backing music to
a 1969 'Sky At Night' special at about 19'30".
Released on 10" vinyl "Music from The BBC Radiophonic Workshop" by Rephlex as CAT147LP (2003)
Released on vinyl "BBC Radiophonic Music" by BBC Records as REC25M
(1971 and 19 May 2003) and on CD as REC25MCD (26 November 2002)
Released on "Doctor Who Volume 2: New Beginnings"
Her papers contain two half-sheets of handwritten manuscript score for Music to Undress to, one with the theme and chords, the other with the bass accompaniment.
Here, we provide these fragments recreated using LilyPond:
Released on 10" vinyl "Music from The BBC Radiophonic Workshop" by Rephlex as CAT147LP (2003)
Included in CD "BBC Radiophonic Music" by BBC Records as REC25MCD
(26 November 2002)
A note in her papers (DD073025) says that 1 minute 18 seconds of her music for "Travelling in Winter" (TRW 7417) was renamed "Dreaming" for issue as track 17 of the BBC record of sound effects "Out Of This World".
"One of her earliest contributions - "Time On Our Hands" - is a
superb subversion of a phrase which would normally evoke (especially
in the context of 1962) new-found affluence, spare time and leisure,
now rendered alienated, distant and isolated."
-- Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
In her papers, she writes "TRW 4060 - The Future - 1987" and
"Don Haworth, Manchester, 20th August".
(Don Haworth is a british playwright and documentary maker).
Released on "BBC Radiophonic Workshop 21" by BBC Records & Tapes, REC354
(1979).
Her papers include her score dated July 1962 for Science Serves the Arts,
a science series for 6th formers broadcast 10.1.63 - 14.2.63.
-- The British Film Institute entry for the series
Her papers contain her score for A.S.& I.,
dated August 1962.
From her notes, it appears to be an "arabic" version of hers
of a theme for a TV programme "Science and Industry"
for which a theme had already been created by ? and ?.
We don't know if her version is based on their melody or not.
It also gets called "Arabic Science and History".
Released on "BBC Radiophonic Workshop 21" by BBC Records & Tapes,
REC354 (1979).
"a devastatingly effective appropriation of the 1930s hit
"Get Out And Get Under"."
-- Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
The original song was by Maurice Abrahms.
Released on "BBC Radiophonic Workshop 21" by BBC Records & Tapes,
REC354 (1979).
For creating the "In a Monastery Garden" sequence of "The Cracksman". The instrument is an Eb safe-unlocking mechanism!Although the 1963 Charlie Drake comedy film by ABPC contains a short sequence in which Drake and some prisoners escape briefly into the prison grounds, its music is orchestral and has nothing matching Delia's description or style.
Hope you like it
Delia Derbyshire
A short synthetic sound effect is used near the end of the film while Drake is using an electronic device to open a museum's safe; it consists of a sine wave of varying frequency followed by some feedback noise (at which Drake makes a pained expression).
In her papers are her notes for a piece she calls "F. Y. in T." (TRW 5053), carried out 26th April to 6th May 1963 in collaboration with David Lyttle.
Her papers include notes for "Oliver Twist" in collaboration with playwright Richard Wortley.
In her papers are her notes for the creation of a
"Radio Newsreel Signature Tune", with work to start 26th July 1963.
"[The Doctor Who theme is] the single most important piece of electronic music".
-- Adrian Utley of Portishead
"Her recording of Ron Grainer's Doctor Who theme, one of the most famous and instantly recognisable TV themes ever" and ranked as the 76th greatest song of the '60s on the music site Pitchfork.
"In those days people were so cynical about electronic music and so
Doctor Who was my private delight. It proved them all wrong."
-- Delia in 1993, according to
The
Millenium Effect
"The first producer of Doctor Who, Verity Lambert, she had in
her mind Les Structures Sonores, this group from Paris. Their music
sounded really electronic but in fact they were all acoustic instruments
and because the Radiophonic Workshop was a below-the-line cost she came to
the Radiophonic Workshop and the boss recommended Ron Grainer because he
had done something called "Giants of Steam". Ron saw the visual titles,
as usual something like a black and white negative, and he took the
timings and went away and wrote the score."
"On the score he'd written "sweeps", "swoops"... beautiful
words... "wind cloud", "wind bubble"... so I got to work and put it
together and when Ron heard the results, oh, he was tickled pink!"
-- Delia, in the Boazine interview
"It was a magic experience because I couldn't see from the music
how it was going to sound."
"She used concrete sources and sine- and square-wave oscillators,
tuning the results, filtering and treating, cutting so that the
joins were seamless, combining sound on individual tape recorders,
re-recording the results, and repeating the process, over and over
again. When Grainer heard the result, his response was "Did I really
write that?" "Most of it," Delia replied.
-- Brian Hodgson
In an official history of the first 25 years of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop,
Delia tells how she created the Dr Who theme tune with a series of
'carefully timed handswoops' over oscillators.
Dick Mills, who helped Delia create the piece, says:
"We started with the bass line. You know those 19-inch jack-bay panels? You could get blank panels too, to fill in between them. They were slightly flexible, so Delia found one that made a good musical twang and played it with her thumb. We recorded it then vari-speeded up and down to different pitches, copied them across to another tape recorder, then made hundreds of measured tape edits to give it the rhythm.""I did the Dr Who theme music mostly on the Jason valve oscillators. Ron Grainer brought me the score. He expected to hire a band to play it, but when he heard what I had done electronically, he'd never imagined it would be so good. He offered me half of the royalties, but the BBC wouldn't allow it. I was just on an assistant studio manager's salary and that was it... and we got a free Radio Times. The boss wouldn't let anybody have any sort of credit."
And what was the main tune played on? "It was just a load of oscillators -- signal generators -- that someone had connected to a little keyboard, one for each note."
But what about that distinctive portamento? "Well, you just twiddled the frequency knob, of course -- how else?"
Eventually, after some pre-mixing, the elements of the entire composition existed on three separate reels of tape, which had to be run somehow together in sync. "Crash-sync'ing the tape recorders was Delia's speciality," says Dick. "We had three big Phillips machines and she could get them all to run exactly together. She'd do: one, two, three, go! -- start all three machines, then tweak until they were exactly in sync, just like multitrack. But with Doctor Who we had a bum note somewhere and couldn't find it! It wasn't that a note was out of tune -- there was just one little piece of tape too many, and it made the whole thing go out of sync. Eventually, after trying for ages, we completely unwound the three rolls of tape and ran them all side by side for miles -- all the way down the big, long corridor in Maida Vale. We compared all three, matching the edits, and eventually found the point where one tape got a bit longer. When we took that splice out it was back in sync, so we could mix it all down."
-- Dick Mills, "BBC Radiophonic Workshop" in Sound On Sound magazine, April 2008.
By comparison, when Kara Blake wanted to include a sample of the Doctor Who theme in her Film Board of Canada-sponsored film The Delian Mode, the BBC quoted her $1000 per second, which would have consumed her entire budget for the film.
The version that has Delia's stamp of approval is the 1:30 version broadcast during the BBC Radio Scotland interview.
"I think every time a new producer came or a new director
came they wanted to tart it up, the title music, and they wanted
to put an extra two bars here, put some extra feedback on the high
frequencies. They kept on tarting it up out of existence. I was really
very shocked at what I had to do in the course of so-called duty."
-- Delia, in
the BBC Scotland interview.
For a detailed history of its reworking see
"incredible, based almost entirely on studio-recorded voices around 26 seconds of electronic delicacy."
-- Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
Released on "BBC Radiophonic Workshop 21" by BBC Records & Tapes, REC354 (1979)
"a succession of tumbling chords, descending with an elegance beyond almost anyone else."
-- Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
In making Ziwzih Ziwzih OO-OO-OO she "used just this one bar repeated which had [previously] been rejected from a science and health program for being too lascivious for the schoolchildren. It was like a science program... it was supposed to be about sex, but under another name. And then the producer had the nerve to turn down my music, saying it was too lascivious. It was just twangy things with electronic pick-ups, and I just used a single note and then did little glissandos on it and pitched it and treated it.
In a draft version of the script for the Reeling and Writhing play, scriptwriter Nicola McCartney has the following dialogue about the event:
DESMOND BRISCOE
The Producer of that education programme -- that Science and Health series -- he called me. He says they can't use the tapes you sent up.
DELIA DERBYSHIRE
He can't use them?
DESMOND BRISCOE
No... He says that the sound arrangement/
DELIA DERBYSHIRE
/ Music.
DESMOND BRISCOE
Theme...DELIA DERBYSHIRE
Music.
DESMOND BRISCOE
Is too lascivious for eleven year-olds.
DELIA DERBYSHIRE
Too "lascivious"?
DESMOND BRISCOE
... Yes. Can you believe it? I said, "For goodness sake, man, it's a programme about sex education!"
He laughs. She stops working and is very silent.
Released on "BBC Radiophonic Workshop 21" by BBC Records & Tapes, REC354 (1979).
Delia created the music for a 1964 programme (unsure if TV or radio) catalogued as 'The Cyprian Queen (The Singing Bird)', TRW reference 6062, produced by M. Bakewell.
"Delia always managed to soften her purist mathematical approach
with a sensitive interpretative touch - 'very sexy' said Michael
Bakewell on first hearing her electronic music for Cyprian
Queen."
-- delia-derbyshire.org
Derbyshire also contributed some effects to Roberto Gerhard's
Anger of Achilles radio play, which won the
Prix Italia
"RAI prize for literary or dramatic programmes with or without music".
An article at
the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid says:
Gerhard put together many works for tape at his house in Cambridge but processed them and did the final mix at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in London. His first work was the 1954 incidental music for Bridget Boland's The Prisoner for chamber orchestra and tape [. . .] and he would be honoured with the Prix Italia in 1965 for The Anger of Achilles for orchestra and tape, created and presented by the BBC.
The BBC Programme Catalogue describes the work as an "epic for radio in three parts by Robert Graves, from his translation of Homer's Iliad. [. . .] Music specially composed for the programme by Roberto Gerhard, with special effects by the B.B.C. Radiophonic Workshop", first broadcast 17 May 1964.
Her papers contain a letter from Martin Esslin, Head of Drama (Sound), to Desmond Briscoe dated 30th June 1964:
I have just been listening to the playback of the completed version of "THE TOWER" and should like to express my deep appreciation for the excellent work done on this production by Delia Derbyshire and John Harrison. This play set them an extremely difficult task and they rose to the challenge with a degree of imaginative intuition and technical mastery which deserves the highest admiration and which will inevitably earn a lion's share of any success the production may eventually achieve. I only wish that it were possible for the names of contributors of this calibre to be mentioned in the credits in the Radio Times and on the air. But failing this I should like to register the fact that I regard their contribution to this production as being at least of equal importance to that of the producer himself.
Working title: "Mid-Century Attitudes" by Barry Bermange,
produced by David Thomson.
"Her collaborations with the poet and dramatist Barry Bermange for
the Third Programme showed her at her elegant best."
-- Brian Hodgson
They are listed in
the
doollee.com article on Barry Bermange.
10.15 The Dreams (/Amor Dei /The Afterlife)
The first (/second /third) of three Inventions for radio by Barry Bermange, in collaboration with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. More than ten years have elapsed since these ‘re-creations in sounds and voices’ were first broadcast. They introduced a fresh genre to the medium and remain classics of radio technique.
"This programme of sounds and voices is an attempt to re-create in five movements some sensations of dreaming - running away, falling, landscape, underwater and colour. All the voices were recorded from life (by Barry Bermange) and arranged in a setting of pure electronic sounds." (RT) -Produced by David Thomson.
"Part of the four programme "Inventions for Radio" series,
created in collaboration with Barry Bermange, Dreams is a collection
of spliced/reassembled interviews with people describing their
dreams. Delia's editing and repetition, together with her dissonant,
often terrifying musique concrete soundbeds, make this distinctly
uneasy bedtime listening. The entire piece is 45 minutes in length."
-- delia-derbyshire.org
It also gets called "Within Dreams".
Broadcast
5 Jan 1964 on the Third Programme and
21:45-22:45 19 Oct 1993 on BBC Radio 3.
"A second invention for radio by Barry Bermange, in collaboration
with the B.B.C.'s Radiophonic Workshop, with talk recorded in
co-operation with the Old People's Welfare Council, Hornsey. Producer:
David Thomson. An attempt to describe God in human terms, and to
create, in the manner of a religious painting, an overall impression
of man's love for Him. The voices were recorded from life and arranged
by the author in a setting of radiophonic sound. Plainsong Antiphon
John Hahessy (boy soprano) - unacc. 16-Nov-1964."
-- Nigel Deacon
"When I was doing the Inventions with Barry Bermange he wanted
sounds which would sound like a Gothic altarpiece. 'Oh,' I said,
'yes. What a good idea. But what do you really mean? What sort of
sounds?' He said 'Well, give me a pencil and paper'. I did, and with great
care and elaboration he drew me a beautiful Gothic altarpiece and said
'That's the sort of sound I want'."
"Barry Bermange said that he himself thought of Amor Dei as
‘rather in the manner of a Renaissance painting with the believers in God
in the foreground or centre and half-hidden disbelievers looking out from
shadowy places round the edge of the painting.’
He has made this programme in four sections. In the first you will hear
several thoughtful voices groping towards God, feeling their way into something
undefined. In the second, some more assured voices cite concrete images; a
defined notion of God begins to emerge. The third is a contest between those
who love God and those who cannot believe in Him. The assured and confident
voices in the last section are inspired by absolute faith."
-- David Thomson in the Radio Times, 1965.
A shortened version was played in the Unit Delta Plus Concert of Electronic Music at the Watermill Theatre, Bagnor on the 10th September 1966.
The British Library Sound Archive has a recording of this,
with catalogue number T1604R BD 1, which can be heard
for free by going to the British Library in London.
Broadcast by the BBC Third Programme on
16
November 1964, repeated on December 5th.
"The third in a cycle of inventions for radio by Barry Bermange,
in collaboration with the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop. Produced by
David Thomson. "This programme is an attempt to reconstruct in sound
the spiritualistic vision of Death and Eternity. It is conceived
as a dream of Death. Using the montage process of his earlier
programmes, 'The Dreams' and 'Amor Dei', the author has arranged in
settings of electronic sound a collection of voices recorded from
life. There are four movements." Radio Times. "Actuality" voices
recorded in co-operation with the Old People's Welfare Council,
Hornsey. 1-Apr-1965."
-- Nigel Deacon
Broadcast
1
April 1965.
Invention for Radio No. 4: The Evenings of Certain Lives (1965)
"A fourth invention for radio by Barry Bermange in collaboration with
the B.B.C.'s Radiophonic Workshop.
An attempt to reconstruct with sounds and voices some of the hazards of growing old."
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Her papers contain
a leaflet for a Theatre 62's production of
John Arden's play "The Business of Good Government"
with sound by Unit Delta Plus, in which she is credited with
composing the soundscore.
It was performed at the Parish Church of Assisi, West Wickham, Kent
on Thurday 16th, Friday 17th and Saturday 18th December,
which correspond in 1965.
The BBC made a radio adaption of the play which was broadcast on 16th December 1964, though there is no evidence that Delia had any involvement with that.
There are two sides of manuscript in her papers for a piece called "Ape", which is probably "Ape and Essence", a TV version of Aldous Huxley's novel of the same name in the TV series "The Wednesday Play", series 1, programme 61, broadcast 18th May 1966. Delia seems to have reused the music for the Brighton Festival in 1967.
"devastatingly effective (and perfect for the optimism of early BBC2, for whom the piece was written)".
-- Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
The programme, an interview with Jo Grimond on the reasons for his resignation
from the leadership of the Liberal Party, was
broadcast on 5 Feb 1967.
Released on "BBC Radiophonic Workshop 21" by BBC Records & Tapes, REC354 (1979)
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"written as theme for an episode of "Out of the Unknown" based around
an Isaac Asimov story in which automata rebel against humans and
worship God in an energy converter"
-- Ian Burdon
"based around a resplicing of "Science and Health", is her most
terrifying moment, tumbling into a nightmare, the sound of childhood
at its most chilling."
-- Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
"Most of the programs that I did were either in the far distant
future, the far distant past or in the mind. I think this was the
climax of a science fiction play called "The Prophet". It ended up
with all these robots and they sang a song of praise to this bloke,
presumably the prophet, and this was the song they sang.
It is difficult to pronounce because it's made from backwards chanting and
I think if you play it forwards it would say something like "Praise to
the master, his wisdom and his reason" and I just chose the best bits and
"Ziwzih Ziwzih", "his wiz, his wiz": it's that backwards. And I must say
that the Oo-oo-oo is electronic! I think it was at the same time as one
of the Beatles' songs, "Please please me", and so that was like, I think,
er, Drew said he thought it sounded medieval. Well that was because it
was like a new religion and they'd go back to square one and the perfect
fifth as the greeks did. And so my oo-oo-oo's were done on the Wobbulator.
"
-- Delia in
the Radio Scotland interview
"I did the music for the whole programme. It was probably in the mid
'60s. [...] I never watched the stuff. I had a script, that's all.
The actors, I got them to chant. The words they were singing were,
"Praise to the master, his wisdom and his [reason]" [...]
I turned it backwards first, then chose the best bits
that sounded good backwards and would fit into a rhythm, and then
speed-changed the voices. Then I used just this one bar repeated which
had [previously] been rejected from
a science and health program
for being too lascivious for the schoolchildren. It was like a science
program... it was supposed to be about sex, but under another name.
And then the producer had the nerve to turn down my music, saying it
was too lascivious. It was just twangy things with electronic pick-ups,
and I just used a single note and then did little glissandos on it and
pitched it and treated it. But the 'Ooh-ooh-ooh' isn't me... that's
wobbulator, pure wobbulator. That's a piece of test equipment that does
wave sweeps."
-- Delia, in
the Surface interview, December 1999
"the voices are reversed but actually say
"Praise to the Master/His Wisdom and His Reason/Praise to the Master/Forever
and OO-OO-OO-OO/His Wis.../His Wis.../OO-OO-OO-OO/"."
-- Peter Marsh, BBC
An image of the Radio Times lists the TV
programme as
"Out of the Unknown: The Prophet, from Reason by Isaac Asimov"
for BBC-2 on Sunday 1st January at 10.05 but the year is missing.
An analysis of
the BBC Programme Catalogue for the series
suggests that was a
1 Jan 1967
retransmission of
the 29 Dec 1966 episode.
Released on 10" vinyl "Music from The BBC Radiophonic Workshop"
by Rephlex as CAT147LP (2003)
Released on vinyl "BBC Radiophonic Music" by BBC Records as REC25M
(1971 and 19 May 2003) and on CD as REC25MCD (26 November 2002)
From 22 to 30 April 1966 she worked on sound for a Proctor & Gamble TV advertisement for washing powder. The script, dated 20th April 1966, calls the piece "Outer space".
Lyrics
"An unreleased perv-pop classic in the 1966 novelty
vein, recorded with Anthony Newley. The future Mr Joan
Collins was after an electronic backing track and called in
Delia.
-- delia-derbyshire.org
It was played at the
Unit Delta Plus Concert of
Electronic Music, 10th September 1966, then went unheard until 2001.
"This electronic pop song is sung by Anthony Newley who also
wrote the words. The piece is composed in a traditional
musical way with melody, rhythm and harmony, and the musical
parameters are all totally predetermined. The sources of
sound are simple sine tones."
-- from the concert programme
"The late Anthony Newley told his label that he wanted
to do something electronic. So they got on to me. So I
produced this bloopy track and he loved it so much he
double-tracked his voice and he used my little tune.
The winking knees in the rain, and their
mini-skirts. I'd done it as a lovely little innocent love
song, because he said to me that the only songs are, "I love
you, I love you" or songs saying "you've gone, you've gone."
I'd written this beautiful little innocent
tune, all sensitive love and innocence, and he made it into
a dirty old raincoat song. But he was really chuffed! Joan
and Jackie Collins dropped him off in a limousine at my
lovely little flat above a flower shop, and he said "If
you can write songs like this, I'll get you out of this
place"! It was only a single-track demo tape. So he rang up
his record company saying "We want to move to a multi-track
studio". Unfortunately the boss of the record company was on
holiday, and by the time he returned Anthony Newley had gone
to America with Joan Collins, so it was never released."
-- Delia, in
the Surface interview
"Delia was initially disappointed with the recording, but as
the years passed she became exceptionally fond of it."
-- delia-derbyshire.org
Unit Delta Plus Concert of Electronic Music (10 September 1966)
"Delia became involved in an early electronic music concert at the
New Mill Theatre in Newbury that also featured a pioneering light projection
show by Hornsey College of Art and magnetic sculptures by Paul Takis."
They put on the Unit Delta Plus Concert of Electronic Music at the Watermill Theatre, Bagnor, near Newbury on the 10th September 1966, featuring:
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Unit Delta Plus studio, 1966
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With Unit Delta Plus she created sounds for Ron Grainer's second play
"On The Level", a musical performed at The Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool.
-- Brian Hodgson's obituary
In her papers there is a list of 19 sequences
lasting a total of 15:18 and
a list of 67½ man-hours
spent on it by Unit Delta Plus between 6th August 1965 and 18th February 1966.
A tape of Unit Delta Plus music was also performed at the Beatles-powered Million Volt Sound Rave, 28 Jan and 4th Feb 1967 at London's Roundhouse in Chalk Farm Road.
"In 1966 she worked with Paul McCartney and George Harrison at an event
called "The Carnival of Light" at the Chalk Farm Roundhouse."
-- The Times obituary,
cited by
Clive Blackburn
Her papers contain a newspaper clipping which reads:
Trendy Beatle
BEATLE Paul McCartney has prepared a tape of electronic noises--known as music in some circles--for use at a “carnival of light” at Centre 42's Round House next month.
Carnival of light? This is a new art form combining sound with light coming mostly from 15 automatic projectors playing onto 60ft-high screens, which changes colour according to the sound.There will be another five projectors developed from a Russian invention, whch create patterns, blending and blurring vividly coloured shapes. They will be hand-operated by artists and designers David Vaughan, Douglas Binder and Dudley Edwards, the three men behind this form of entertainment.
The occasion threatens to be one of those eye-dazzling ear-splitting affairs that the trendy have already dubbed “psychedelic son et lumiere.”
She has mentioned doing work for the Brighton Festival, and in her papers are a letter dated Dec 13th 1966 and a draft programme from Clive Latimor of Hornsey College of Art, dated November 10th, 1966:
K.4 (Kinetic four dimensional
Brighton Festival: West Pier: April 14th - 30th
The advanced Studies Group of Hornsey College of Art initiates experiments
in kinetic/audio/visual environments collectively titled K.4.
Assisted by staff and students of Fine Art, Visual Research, Three
Dimensional Design, Post Diploma and Film and Television Departments, the
following features are presented:
Kinetic Arena
A white elliptical cyclorama 60' x 80' together with the white painters lattice
girder roof creates a large audio/visual environment. This will be programmed
with continuously developing moving images by 10 high powered (2kw and 5kw)
automatic projectors. An arrangement of 30 loudspeakers will provide three
dimensional sound. From Monday to Friday, from 8 until midnight, for the two
weeks of the Festival the arena will function as a discotheque. On the opening
night and the three following weekends special audio/visual kinetic performances
will be presented. In addition to LIGHT/SOUND WORKSHOP performances which
include special slide projection techniques we hope to have performances by
Bruce Lacey with his robots and by Pink Floyd Sound.
[...]
Kinetic Labyrinth
Whilst the Arena aim to create a spacious environment for the social
activity of a large group the Labyrinth aims to provide a more enclosed and
personal experience.
The Labyrinth is a means of presenting the work of a number of British and
foreign kinetic artists together with environments created by LIGHT/SOUND
WORKSHOP.
[...] The environments will have a number of walls which are
transparent projection screens of Perspex and other materials. Colours and
imaged will be programmed on to these together with appropriate sounds tracks.
"written by Dudley Simpson and realised by Delia.
It isn't a classic Delia moment by any means [. . .]
it sounds rather end-of-pier [. . .]
although a distinctive DD rhythm track redeems it somewhat."
Released on "Doctor Who Volume 1: The Early Years 1963-1969" (BBC Music WMSF 6023-2)
In her papers is a group of papers collectively called "Philips"
done with Unit Delta Plus, 3.2.67, with notes, score fragments and tape labels.
"She even recorded a score for an ICI-sponsored student fashion show,
which was the first in the world to use electronic music."
-- Brian Hodgson
The concert programme described it as "A presentation of menswear styles in bri-nylon, terylene and crimplene designed and made up by students of the Fashion School of the Royal College of Art" on 6th April 1967.
The music is included in the Attic Tapes and is a collage of her other
pieces, artfully blended and reworked to transition from one to the next.
Released on 10" vinyl "Music from The BBC Radiophonic Workshop" by Rephlex as CAT147LP (2003)
Included in CD "BBC Radiophonic Music" by BBC Records as REC25MCD (26 November 2002)
"perfect subversion of a classic brave-new-world dynamism phrase. The
"tomorrow" I imagine here is the antithesis of that which the BBC in
the 60s made much play of promoting to its audience; instead, it could
easily be some kind of dystopia, a state of decay or de-evolution."
-- Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
The TV series for which it was written was
first
broadcast 7 December 1967.
Released on 10" vinyl "Music from The BBC Radiophonic Workshop" by Rephlex as CAT147LP (2003)
Released on vinyl "BBC Radiophonic Music" by BBC Records as REC25M
(1971 and 19 May 2003) and on CD as REC25MCD (26 November 2002)
"This was a documentary program about the Tuareg tribe. The
Tuareg tribe are nomads in the Sahara desert and I think they live
by bartering, taking salt, I think it was, across the desert. In
the piece, the extract you're going to hear, I tried to convey the
distance of the horizon and the heat haze and then there's this very
high, slow reedy sound. That indicates the strand of camels seen
at a distance, wandering across the desert. That in fact was made
from square waves on the valve oscillators we've just talked about,
but square waves put though every filter I could possibly find to
take out all the bass frequencies and so one just hears the very
high frequencies. It had to be something out of this world."
-- Delia in
the Radio Scotland interview
"mostly created using electronic oscillators - severely high-pass
filtered - to give the "shimmering heat haze" backdrop to the Tuareg
tribesmen weaving slowly across the screen of a period documentary.
Delia has since referred to the piece as including her "castrated oboe",
but the only non-electronic source really recorded is her voice, cut up
and re-pieced."
-- delia-derbyshire.org
"phenomenally atmospheric; such is its surround-sound quality that it
totally transcends the narrow constraints of simply coming from my
speakers, instead filling the room, my consciousness, the air itself.
And yet virtually nothing happens..."
-- Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
"Among her outstanding television work, one of her favourites was
composed for a documentary for The World About Us on the Tuareg people
of the Sahara desert. It still haunts me. She used her own voice for
the sound of the hooves, cut up into an obbligato rhythm, and she added
a thin, high electronic sound using virtually all the filters and
oscillators in the workshop.
"My most beautiful sound at the time was a tatty green BBC lampshade,"
she recalled.
"It was the wrong colour, but it had a beautiful ringing sound to it.
I hit the lampshade, recorded that, faded it up into the ringing part
without the percussive start.
"I analysed the sound into all of its partials and frequencies, and
took the 12 strongest, and reconstructed the sound on the workshop's
famous 12 oscillators to give a whooshing sound. So the camels rode off
into the sunset with my voice in their hooves and a green lampshade on
their backs."
-- Brian Hodgson's Guardian obituary
Few could disagree with Delia's own remark on recently hearing Blue Veils:
"Doesn't it just melt you!"
The lampshade in question is the Coolicon Utility Lighting Shade,
British Patent No 419602, Registered Design No 777912; they
sometimes appear for sale on ebay.
Released on 10" vinyl "Music from The BBC Radiophonic Workshop" by Rephlex as CAT147LP (2003)
Released on vinyl "BBC Radiophonic Music" by BBC Records as REC25M
(1971 and 19 May 2003) and on CD as REC25MCD (26 November 2002)
Released on "Doctor Who Volume 2: New Beginnings"
Music for RSC "Macbeth" (1967)
With Unit Delta Plus she worked on Guy Woolfenden's electronic score for
Peter Hall's 1967 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Macbeth at the
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford upon Avon with Paul Scofield as Macbeth.
The play opened on the 15th August 1967 and the theatre programme says "Music by: Guy Woolfenden and Unit Delta Plus Electronic Music" and "Act One is about 1 hour; Act Two is about 80 minutes." |
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Her papers contain notes, script and a telegram dated 15 Sep 67 for an Esso TV advert in wihch a tiger talks with a man operating the lift at Esso headquarters. It is not know whether this was ever realised.
At Kaleidophon, she did the sound track for the film "Wrapping Piece" for Yoko Ono Productions.
"I did a film soundtrack for Yoko Ono, while she slept on my floor.
[. . .] It would be '67 or '68. It was about the same time
that she met John Lennon [. . .] So yes, she did her
Bottoms film. And we did the soundtrack for the shorter film,
which was the wrapping of the lions in Trafalgar Square, which was
a happening."
-- Delia, in the
Surface interview
The film was shown at the ICA in London in 2004 but the film had no soundtrack and "A friend at the ICA asked the curator of the exhibition and film festival, someone with an exhaustive knowledge of Yoko Ono's work, who said that he had no knowledge of a film of the Wrapping Event with an existing soundtrack."
"Shows that she could also do the upbeat promotional thing well;
the rings and knocks are worked perfectly into the perfect 60s
advertising campaign soundtrack."
-- Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
"reduced her to fits of giggles when played during a BBC Radio Scotland
interview"
"Well, I think that's really at the more trivial end of what I did.
Yes, isn't it jolly?"
-- Delia in
the Radio Scotland
interview
Released on 10" vinyl "Music from The BBC Radiophonic Workshop" by Rephlex as CAT147LP (2003)
Released on vinyl "BBC Radiophonic Music" by BBC Records as REC25M
(1971 and 19 May 2003) and on CD as REC25MCD (26 November 2002)
"a fine reworking / extension of the structure of her "Talk Out"."
-- Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
Delia says in the 1977 BBC Radio Scotland interview that she hadn't heard it since 1968.
Released on 10" vinyl "Music from The BBC Radiophonic Workshop" by Rephlex as CAT147LP (2003)
Released on vinyl "BBC Radiophonic Music" by BBC Records as REC25M (1971 and 19 May 2003) and on CD as REC25MC (26 November 2002)
"angular robot jazz crammed with incident"
-- Peter Marsh
"the real masterpiece is "Pot Au Feu". This is three minutes and
nineteen seconds of paranoia, virtually a rave track circa 1991 in its
structure; a stattering, pounding teleprinter-paced bassline worthy of
Timbaland as the tension builds, then a moment of chaos and crisis,
an alarm-bell of a hook recalling the "panic / excitement" lines so
prevalent in early 90s hardcore."
-- Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
"A pounding, fantastically rhythmical track - it's unsettling enough
to have a speedfreak running to get the breadknives in the kitchen"
Released on 10" vinyl "Music from The BBC Radiophonic Workshop" by Rephlex as CAT147LP (2003)
Released on vinyl "BBC Radiophonic Music" by BBC Records as REC25M
(1971 and 19 May 2003) and on CD as REC25MCD (26 November 2002)
At Kaleidophon she produced electronic title music for Who Is,
"a four-country, thirteen-programme, colour-TV series".
In her papers there are production notes and abstract scores for a
series signature for Allan King Associates (Toronto) produced by Roger Graaf
and directed by Paul Davies, Denis Postle and Dick Fontaine.
One of her Who Is papers is headed "N.U.".
Her papers contain notes for a piece "Bring Back", dated the 9th April 1968.
In July-Sep 1968, she created two potential signature tunes for "The Living World", a television series produced by Robina Gyle-Thompson, both of which were rejected by the programme's maker John Sparks in August in favour of a "jazz theme".
The BBC series "Out Of The Unknown" produced Isaac Asimov's "The Naked Sun" directed by Rudolph Carter, for which Delia produced music sequences throughout. It was filmed 23rd-26th July 1968 with studio recording on the 8th and 9th August and shown on BBC2 on 18th February 1969.
According to the Internet Movie Database, "This episode was wiped by the BBC and no copy of it is known to exist."
Her papers contain the full script for the episode with her notes for the creation of musical sequences and sound effects.
In 1976, three tracks from this work were renamed by BBC Records as
"Heat Haze (0:58)",
"Frozen Waste (1:18)" and
"Icy Peak (0:44)"
and issued by the BBC on an album of sound effects.
Released as tracks 48, 50 and 51 of "Out Of This World: Atmospheric Sound Effects from the Radiophonic Workshop" by BBC Records & Tapes REC255 (1976).
Re-released as track 56, 58 and 59 of "Essential Science Fiction Sound Effects, vol. 2"
on audio cassette as BBC 855 (1993) and on CD as BBC CD855.
Delia's papers contain the complete typeset score for her musical setting of Apollinaire's poem of the same name. It consists of two verses with a chorus after each verse.
recreated using LilyPond. According to James Percival: 'it appears [to have been] written for a 1968 Schools Radio programme about Cubism in the series "Art and Design" [...] There is an off-air recording of most of this programme in the Manchester collection (DD263), and in Delia's realisation of Le Pont Mirabeau it's sung by White Noise vocalist John Whitman. The programme was written and narrated by Edward Lucie-Smith.'At Kaleidophon she made electronic music for 'the coloured wall' for the Association of Electrical Engineers.
An Electric Storm (as "The White Noise") (1968)
"I think my forte is, well, apart from having an analytical
mind to do electronic sound, at the opposite end I'm very
good at writing extended melody for which there was not
really an opening at the BBC. And so I met this guy, I was
giving a lecture at Morley College in London and he came up
to me afterwards. He played the double bass, the same as I did,
and he was already doing tracks for the Ballet Rambert and we
got together and started this album."
Track list (the track times in square brackets are those stated on the sleeves):
More details on the web page geocities.com/CapitolHill
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"I also did the music for Peter Hall's first feature film, Work is a
Four Letter Word. I did the electronic part of the music... the bloopy
bits when they'd taken the magic mushrooms."
(see Delia's Theme above)
-- Delia, in the
Surface interview, Dec 1999
"[Delia's Theme from ESL104] was used
for the Cilla Black driven British '60s classic Work is a Four
Letter Word. Cilla (surprise, surprise) takes a lorra Magic
Mushrooms, accompanied by Delia's music, and generally plays the
working class (contraceptive) pill popping girl of her Swingin'
times. Groovy, Fab and Gear."
-- delia-derbyshire.org
Delia's papers include a note dated 1st January 1968 in which she writes that
it was delightful to work on but did not cover the costs of the studio,
resulting in a paper loss of £250.
Available on DVD or VHS from
The Video Beat.
Her papers contain a manuscript for a piece called "Clothes [S8]", dated 22.12.68.
|
With Kaleidophon, she did the music and effects for Peter Logan's
"experiments towards Mechanical Ballet", performed at the
New Art Centre, 41 Sloane Street, London from the 3rd to the 9th of March 1969.
-- Kirsten Cubitt's article "Dial a Tune" in The Guardian, 3 September 1970.
There are two versions of this in circulation;
one with attack on the bell hits and one with the attack removed.
Released on "BBC Radiophonic Workshop 21" by BBC Records & Tapes, REC354 (1979)
Released on "BBC Radiophonic Workshop 21" by BBC Records & Tapes, REC354 (1979)
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Treated by Delia and Brian Hodgson.
This snippet is a treat for a compilation album of songs by different artists.
Released on John Peel Presents Top Gear, BBC: REC52S (1969)
"When asked to "make some TV title music using only animal sounds" - much thought and ingenuity resulted in Great Zoos of the World."
-- delia-derbyshire.org
"including the most accurate set of animal noises ever created electronically."
-- Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
Released on "BBC Radiophonic Workshop 21" by BBC Records & Tapes, REC354 (1979)
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| Cover, 1969 edition |
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| Cover, 2006 edition |
"Recorded while Delia was still employed at the Radiophonic Workshop
and working on the White Noise LP. [...] originally released under the
pseudonym Russe (a.k.a. Li De la Russe - or "Of the Red" - a reference
to her auburn red hair) also features work from David Vorhaus and Brian
Hodgson (aka St. George - he was also still under contract to the
Beeb!)"
-- delia-derbyshire.org
This rare mono record was used extensively to provide the music for the
'70s television series "The Tomorrow People".
Brian Hodgson mentioned that they had done music for Tony Richardson's Hamlet,
performed at London's Roundhouse and featuring Nicol Williamson as Hamlet.
-- Brian Hodgson's obituary
A short sample is included in the BBC News article
"Lost Tapes of the Dr Who composer"
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Delia produced electronic music and effects for the BBC's 1970 production of "The Bagman or The Impromptu of Muswell Hill", a radio play by John Arden, directed by Martin Esslin. The play is one hour and 28 minutes in length and is decribed as a "Witty Fable" and a "modern version of Molière's Versailles Impromptu" at doollee.com
A note in her papers says that "The Bagman" was entered by the BBC for the
Italia Prize 1970 and that she was scheduled to receive 20% of the prize money
if the play should win.
First broadcast on Radio 3 in 1970.
Broadcast as "The Monday Play" on BBC Radio 4 on 31st January 1977.
It can be downloaded from mediafire.com
At Kaleidophon, she produced music for David Thomson's production of
Euripides' play "Medea" which opened at the Greenwich Theatre on April 14
(of which year?)
-- Kirsten Cubitt's article
"Dial a Tune" in The Guardian, 3 September 1970.
The Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music's list of her works includes "Robert Lowell, documentary film score (1970)" and the index of her tapes has "DD045/52/51: Lowell 1/2/3 and DD178: Last installment of electronic sound for Robert Lowell Film".
Robert Lowell was a Pulitzer prize-winning American poet who lived and lectured in England from 1970 to 1975.
In summer of 1970, with Kaleidophon, "Edward Lucie Smith, who had worked with
Delia on a schools radio programme, asked her to set some verse for an evening
called "Poets in Prison" at the City of London Festival."
-- Kirsten Cubitt's article "Dial a Tune" in The Guardian, 3 September 1970.
Her papers include many of the poems in question as well as some manuscripts
for the music.
She was sent the first batch of poems on 30th January 1970 and was paid on the
21st/24th July.
EMS LP 1 sleeve |
"Music for 'I measured the skies', a BBC2 biography of Johann Kepler."
"I could not have been more pleased with the results.
I thought I might be asking for the impossible, to
restrict Delia's musical talents within the constraints
of what had already been established.
[...] His primitive ideas on 'The Harmony of the Spheres' were realized
with incredible sensitivity and emotive power by Delia's music.
Please pass on my sincere thanks and admiration."
-- Note from John Glenister to D. Briscoe, 10 March 1970, in her papers
"While the air-raid sirens and bombing sounds of Delia's youth in
wartime Coventry certainly shaped her music, this piece makes that
influence explicit. This rare recording has only ever been released
on an EMS promotional record."
-- delia-derbyshire.org
"I was there [in Coventry] in the blitz and it's come to me, relatively
recently, that my love for abstract sounds [came from] the air-raid
sirens: that's a sound you hear and you don't know the source of as a
young child... then the sound of the "all clear" - that was electronic
music."
-- Delia, in the Boazine interview
First broadcast on 4th November 1970 according to imdb.com
Released on promotional LP "EMS LP 1" by Zinovieff, circa 1971.
Her papers contain three sheets of her score for a piece called Early Morning; one of the sheets is on the back of the programme for a performance of classical music by the BBC Symphony Orchestra on the 17th of November 1970.
The sleeve notes for the BFI's DVD release of the 1971 film "Duffer" say that
Delia provided sound effects for this film.
Available on DVD from
the BFI filmstore,
Amazon,
MovieMail and
play.com.
Her papers contain her annotation to Ted Hughes' script for his play "Orpheus"
as well as three VCS3 dope sheets for it.
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For the "Radiophonic Workshop in Concert" event held on the 3rd May 1971 at the Royal Festival Hall in the presence of the Queen to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Institute of Electrical Engineers,
"I began by interpreting the actual letters, I.E.E. one hundred,
in two different ways. The first one in a morse code version using the
morse for I.E.E.100. This I found extremely dull, rhythmically, and so I
decided to use the full stops in between the I and the two E's because
full stop has a nice sound to it: it goes di-dah di-dah di-dah."
"I wanted to have, as well as a rhythmic motive, to have musical
motive running throughout the whole piece and so I interpreted the letters
again into musical terms. 'I' becomes B, the 'E' remains and 100 I've
used in the roman form of C."
-- from recordings used in "Sculptress of Sound"
A copy exists in the tapes from her attic and two short excerpts were broadcast in the the "Sculptress of Sound" documentary on BBC Radio.
A short sample of the backing track is included in the BBC News article
"Lost Tapes
of the Dr Who composer",
which is discussed on the
Create Digital Music forum.
Released on promotional LP "EMS LP 1" by Zinovieff, circa 1971.
Released on Flexidisc "EMS FLEXI 1" given away with EMS Synthi brochures.
Stereo remix on "BBC Radiophonic Workshop - a Retrospective".
Tutankhamun's Egypt (1971) (2:16)
Music for the series "Tutankhamun's Egypt" written by Cyril Aldred,
first
broadcast 2 April 1972.
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She did the music for the film "O Fat White Woman" written by William Trevor and directed by Philip Saville, with the following tracks (the names are invented by me):
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"Library samples of electronic music for radio, TV and film industry"
All tracks are credited to Harper/Russe/St George.
Harper = Don Harper, Li De La Russe = Delia Derbyshire, Nikki St George = Brian Hodgson.
Read the sleeve notes by
John Cavanagh for a loving and entertaining portrait of Delia
and the circumstances surrounding the album's creation.
It used to be available from
Boa Melody Bar
but they only have
the T-shirt now.
You can order the vinyl and hear some samples at
Boomkat.
Released on vinyl by KPM Music Library as KPM1104 (1972)
Reissued in limited editions of 500 copies on 180gm audiophile green vinyl
by Glo-spot as GLOSPOT1104.
Available as a 40MB RAR archive at RapidShare.
Oh Dear What Can The Matter Be (1:18) (1972)A track from an unreleased Southern Library of Recorded Music record, created under the pseudonym "Doris Haze" (or "Doris Hayes"?), according to Justin Spear on the radio programme Stuart Maconie's "Freak Zone" on Sunday 12 June 2005. |
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This is the electronic soundtrack realised with Elsa Stansfield
for the 32-minute film "Circle of Light: The Photography of Pamela Bone"
directed by Anthony Roland, which won the Short Film Art Section of the
17th
Cork Film Festival in 1972.
The music is a gentle half hour of real and electronic seascapes and birdsong
on a evolving background of shaped noise, introduced
and signed off by variants of the "lampshade" sound used in Golden Veils.
(The accompanying film is a sequence of wobbly zooms and pans on bleak
seaside and woodland photographs, some of them beautiful.)
This is by far the longest surviving single piece of her music.
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"Brian Hodgson and Delia Derbyshire recorded the music for this
1973 horror movie at Electrophon in London."
One recognisably Delian element in the soundtrack is a rhythmic tamtam backing.
Details at imbd.com.
The musical parts of the film score are available
at mediafire.
According to
her entry in the Internet Movie Database,
she did the music for the short film "Een van die Dagen"
("One of These Days")
written and directed by Else Madelon Hooykaas and Elsa Stansfield.
IMDB dates this film 1974, but Madelon says 1973.
Running time: 30 minutes.
Madelon Hooykaas tells me that Delia made the music for a second film by
Hooykaas and Stansfield,
The only surviving copy of the music for both of these films is Madelon
Hooykaas' copy on half inch tape which will shortly be given for
conservation and distribution to the
Filmmuseum in Amsterdam.
The films were shown at the CCA in Glasgow on 27th January 2011.
Synchrondipity Machine (an unfinished dream)In 2001 she returned to sound with Sonic Boom's Experimental Audio Research. The credits for this track read:
Released on "The Electronic Bible - Chapter 1" (White Label Music, WLM 004). Available here as an MP3 audio download courtesy of Sonic Boom. |
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"She was badly treated by the BBC, repeatedly turned down for
promotions that should have been hers. Her name was never recognised on
recordings of her works because that was BBC policy and, as an employee,
she never received a penny in royalties for Dr Who.
The money was never the issue with Delia so long as she had enough to
live on, but the lack of recognition was."
-- Clive Blackburn, in
the Mail on Sunday article
"Something serious happened around '72, '73, '74: the world went out of tune
with itself and the BBC went out of tune with itself... I think, probably, when
they had an accountant as director general.
I didn't like the music business."
-- Delia, in the Boazine interview
"I still haven't worked out why I left - self preservation I think."
-- Delia, in the
Hutton interview, 24 Feb 2000
She has also mentioned
and, according to www.ex-sounds.net, she is given special thanks on Sonic Boom's albums:
"A number of recordings by Delia Derbyshire and Maddalena Fagandini are
available on the Cadenza catalogue at the National Sound Archive Listening
Department, at the British Library."
-- the
Hutton interview.
Apart from the Doctor Who Theme and the tracks from the Electric Storm album, the Archive catalogue lists:
Delia died on the 3rd of July 2001 in hospital of liver/kidney failure.
Several musical tributes have been made to her:
A theatrical production by Nicola McCartney, based on Delia's life, was put on 7-23 October 2004 at the Tron theatre in Glasgow.
The review site for the production contains a few biographical snippets: "a brief and disastrous marriage to a striking Yorkshire miner" in 1974 when "at only 37, she was beginning the long battle with alcohol and depression that would shadow the remaining three decades of her life."
The prodction was also reviewed in an article on news.scotsman.com on 25 Sep 2004.
A radio play based on her life, written by Martyn Wade, directed by Cherry Cookson and featuring Sonic Boom as himself, was broadcast on BBC Radio 7 on 8 November 2005 and is included on the CD "Doctor Who at the BBC: The Plays", ISBN 18460 70440, from the BBC Radio Collection series.
Kara Blake's
half-hour documentary about Delia'a life and work is described in
an article in
the Montreal Mirror and has its
own website.
Delia in a
3.4-second video clip from the BBC's "Alchemists of Sound" (DivX5, 600KB)
If you only have Windows Media Player, use
this version
(MPEG1, 900KB)
Delia putting Pot au Feu together from tape loops in a
77-second video clip from the BBC's "Alchemists of Sound" (XviD, 9.4MB)
If you only have Windows Media Player, use
this version (MPEG1, 8.8MB)
"[Hardly] anything of it was done in real time. It was done either at half-speed
or chopped together from little bits of tape..."
28-second slow-motion video clip from the BBC's "Alchemists of Sound" (XviD, 3.0MB)
If you only have Windows Media Player, use
this version (MPEG1, 2.9MB)
A 98MB AVI file containing 289.0 seconds of:
Desmond Briscoe talking;
Delia explaining waveforms;
Delia making Pot Au Feu (long version);
Delia talking, with glimpses of John Baker and others.
A 35 MB AVI file containing only the first
61.4 seconds of Delia's 1st bit in the above clip, with a larger image.
Andy Votel says: "Bradford Museum of Film and Television has a vintage episode of Tomorrow's World featuring Delia Derbyshire explaining the musique-concrete methods adopted at the Radiophonic Workshop when creating those inimitable TV soundtracks. DD almost started dancing at one point. It was incredible..."
The Museum's "TV Heaven" archive used to list this item as "Tomorrow's World (Radiophonic Workshop), 1965, 30 mins" but it doesn't any more. However, there is a local copy of the index card here. To book a viewing, call the TV Heaven desk directly on (01274) 203433, although booking is not always necessary.
BBC's "Classic Britannia" EPISODE 2: MODERNISM AND MINIMALISM, 1962 to 1980 Archive Interviews: DAPHNE ORAM & DELIA DERBYSHIRE - Composers, BBC Radiophonic WorkshopFirst broadcast 29 June 2007.
This site was created with the logistical support of
medien.kunstlabor.at
and the personal kindness of
Franz Xaver.
The research was made possible by the hard work involved in the making of
the sites listed above, as well as the various sources listed throughout
the chronology. The research was aided by information, leads and personal
effort from Sonic Boom, Mark the Bus, Ian Burdon, Mike Brown, Peter Marsh,
Ray White, Dick Mills and Andrew Harrison as well as numerous
subscribers to the Delia
Derbyshire mailing list.
Thanks also to you if you make a donation.
| Compiled by Martin Guy <martinwguy@gmail.com> |
