Delia Derbyshire
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| Delia Derbyshire | |
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 Delia Derbyshire
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| Born | May 5, 1937 Coventry, UK |
| Died | July 3, 2001 |
Delia Derbyshire (May 5, 1937 - July 3, 2001) was a British musician and composer who was a pioneer of electronic music. She is probably best known for her electronic realisation of Ron Grainer's theme music to the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and for her work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
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[edit] Early career
Educated at Coventry Grammar School, Derbyshire then completed a degree in mathematics and music at Girton College, Cambridge. In 1959 she applied for a position at Decca Records only to be told that the company did not employ women in their recording studios. Instead she took a position at the UN in Geneva, soon returning to London to work for music publishers Boosey and Hawkes.
Some of her most acclaimed work was done in the 1960s in collaboration with the British artist and playwright Barry Bermange, for the Third Programme (the radio station which later evolved into BBC Radio 3). Besides the Doctor Who theme, Derbyshire also composed and produced scores, incidental pieces and themes for many BBC radio and TV programmes. A selection of some of her best 1960s electronic music creations for the BBC can be found on the album BBC Radiophonic Music (BBC Records), which was re-released on CD in 2002. Several of the smaller pieces that Derbyshire created at the Radiophonic Workshop were used for many years as incidental music by the BBC and other broadcasters, including the ABC.
[edit] Doctor Who
In 1963, Ron Grainer was asked to compose the theme tune to the Doctor Who series that began late in that year. As part of the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, Derbyshire developed this into the version that was then used on the original show.
Ron Grainer was so amazed by her rendition of his original theme that he attempted to get her a co-composer credit, but this was prevented by BBC bureaucracy. Derbyshire's interpretation of Grainer's theme used electronic oscillators and magnetic audio tape editing (including tape loops and reverse tape effects) to create an eerie and unearthly sound that was quite unlike anything that had been heard before. Derbyshire's original Doctor Who theme is believed to have been the first television theme to be created and produced by entirely electronic means.
As synthesizers and multi-track recorders did not exist in those days, much of the Doctor Who theme was constructed by recording the individual notes from electronic sources one by one onto magnetic tape, cutting the tape with a razor blade to get individual notes on little pieces of tape a few centimetres long and sticking all the pieces of tape back together one by one to make up the tune (see e.g. this page). This was a laborious process which took weeks.
More recent arrangements of the theme, realized using conventional synthesizers, have been criticized by some Doctor Who fans as being poor imitations. However, the most recent rendition used for the revived series in 2005, arranged by Murray Gold, incorporates elements of Derbyshire's original arrangement not heard since 1980.
[edit] Other work
In 1966, while still working at the BBC, Delia with fellow Radiophonic Workshop member Brian Hodgson and EMS founder Peter Zinovieff set up Unit Delta Plus, an organisation which they intended to use to create and promote electronic music. Based in a studio in Zinovieff's townhouse in Putney, they exhibited their music at a few experimental and electronic music festivals, including The Million Volt Light and Sound Rave at which The Beatles' "Carnival of Light" had its only public playing. After a troubled performance at the Royal College of Art, in 1967, the unit disbanded.
Also in the late sixties, she again worked with Hodgson in setting up the Kaleidophon studio in Camden Town with fellow electronic musician David Vorhaus. The studio produced electronic music for various London theatres and, in 1968, the three used it to produce their first album as the band White Noise. Although later albums were essentially solo Vorhaus albums, the debut, An Electric Storm featured collaborations with Derbyshire and Hodgson and is now considered an important and influential album in the development of electronic music.
The trio, using pseudonyms, also contributed to the Standard Music Library. Many of these recordings, including compositions by Delia using the name "Li De la Russe", were later used on the seventies ITV science fiction rivals to Doctor Who; The Tomorrow People and Timeslip.
In 1967, she assisted Guy Woolfenden with his electronic score for Peter Hall's production of Macbeth with the Royal Shakespeare Company. The pair also contributed the music to Hall's 1968 film Work is a Four Letter Word.
Her other work during this period included taking part in a performance of electronic music at The Roundhouse, which also featured work by Paul McCartney, the soundtrack for a Yoko Ono film, the score for an ICI-sponsored student fashion show and the sounds for Anthony Roland's award-winning film of Pamela Bone's photography, entitled Circle of Light.
[edit] Later life
In 1973, she left the BBC and, after a brief stint working at Hodgson's Electrophon studio during which time she contributed to the soundtrack to the film The Legend of Hell House, stopped composing music. She had a series of jobs as a radio operator, in an art gallery and in a bookshop. She was briefly married but eventually she met her life-partner, Clive Blackburn, who gave her stability. She returned to music in the late nineties after having her interest renewed by fellow electronic musician Peter Kember and was working on an album when she died aged 64 of renal failure while recovering from breast cancer.
In 2002, a play entitled Blue Veils and Golden Sands about her work at the Radiophonic Workshop and subsequent life was broadcast as part of BBC Radio 4's Afternoon Play slot. In 2004, at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow, her life was also portrayed in the play Standing Wave - Delia Derbyshire in the '60s written by Nicola McCartney.
[edit] Further Reading and documentaries
- BBC 4, "Alchemists of Sound", Saturday 28 May 2005. Television documentary on the BBC Radiophonics Workshop.
[edit] External links
- delia-derbyshire.org
- Delia Derbyshire's obituary by Brian Hodgson in The Guardian, dated July 7, 2001
- Article from The Scotsman 24 September 2004 by Susan Mansfield
- Delia Derbyshire's Audiological Chronology
- Delia Derbyshire at the Internet Movie Database
- Information on Circle of Light
- Standing Wave website
