Daphne Oram
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Daphne Oram (December 31, 1925 - January 5, 2003), was a pioneering British composer and electronic musician. She was the creator of the "Oramics" technique, a technique used to create electronic sounds.
Educated at Sherborne School For Girls, Oram was, from an early age, taught piano and organ as well as composition. In 1943 she was offered a place at the Royal College of Music but instead took up a position as a "music balancer" at the BBC. During this period she became aware of developments in "synthetic" sound and began experimenting with tape recorders. She also spent some time in the 1940s composing music, which remained unperformed, including an orchestal work entitled Still Point. In the 1950s she was promoted to become a music studio manager and began to campaign the BBC to provide electronic music facilities for composing sounds and music, using musique concrète techniques, for use in BBC programming and in 1957 she was commissioned to compose music for the play Amphytryon 38. Using a sine wave oscillator, an early tape recorder and some self-designed filters, she produced the score from only electronic sources; the first of its kind at the BBC. Along with fellow electronic musician and BBC colleague Desmond Briscoe, she began to receive commissions for many other works including a significant production of Samuel Beckett’s All That Fall. As demand grew for these electronic sounds, the BBC gave Oram and Briscoe a budget to start the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
During her time at the Radiophonic Workshop in 1958, she produced a novel music synthesizer using her "Oramics" technique. It was similar to Yevgeny Sholpo's "Variophone" and used drawings on a 35mm film strips to control the sound produced. In October of that year she was sent by the BBC to the "Journées Internationales de Musique Expérimentale" at the Brussels World’s Fair (where Edgard Varèse demonstrated his "Poème électronique"). Hearing some of the work by her contemporaries, she decided to resign from the BBC, only one year after the Workshop was opened, to set-up her own studio to develop her techniques.
In 1959, she installed her studio in a converted oast house in Wrotham,Kent. Her, mostly commercial, output from the studio covered a far wider range than the Radiophonic Workshop, with her providing background music for not only radio and television but also theatre and short commercial films. She was also commissioned to provide sounds for installations and exhibitions. Other work included electronic sounds for the 1961 horror film The Innocents, concert works including "Four Aspects" and collaborations with opera composer Thea Musgrave. Later in her career she began to lecture, around the UK, on electronic music and studio techniques and in 1971 she wrote the book An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics, which dealt with electronic music in a philosophical manner.
In the 1990s she suffered two strokes and was forced to stop working, later moving to a nursing home. She died in 2003, aged 77.
Besides being a musical innovator her other significant achievements include being the first woman to direct an electronic music studio, the first woman to set up a personal studio and the first woman to design and construct an electronic music instrument.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Daphne Oram: a tribute to a pioneer
- Daphne Oram and "Oramics"
- The Independent newspaper obituary of Daphne Oram
- Guardian newspaper obituary of Daphne Oram
- BBC News story: Daphne Oram, the unsung pioneer of techno
- "Radiophonic Ladies"
- A biography and list of compositions
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