Born: 5 May, 1937, in Coventry
Died: 3 July, 2001, aged 64
Best known for her work on the Doctor Who theme, there is little doubt that Delia Derbyshire, who recently died of renal failure, is one of the most important figures in the development of “electronic” music in the UK.
Although never a household name, her genuinely ground-breaking and pioneering work both within and outside of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop always attracted the attention of music’s more radical exponents. During the Sixties, these included Paul McCartney, Karl-heine Stockhausen, Pink Floyd, Yoko Ono and Brian Jones. Over 30 years later, she was being cited, credited and covered by bands ranging from Add n to (x) and Sonic Boom to Aphex Twin and The Chemical Brothers.
For many, however, Delia’s single most important contribution to public recognition of electronic music was her “realisation” of the Doctor Who theme. Literally constructed from oscillator swoops and magnetic tape splices (synthesisers having yet to be invented in 1963) the music that sent generations scuttling behind the sofa remains one of the most innovative and recognisable television themes ever devised.
When the composer Ron Grainer first hear it, he was “tickled pink” and said Delia deserved at least half of the royalties. The BBC, however, did not work in that way; indeed, the only credit given onscreen was to the anonymous ‘BBC Radiophonic Workshop’.
Delia was born and grew up in Coventry, a fairly happy childhood soundtracked by the wail of air-raid alerts, falling bombs and all-clear sirens. While she studied piano to performer level outside of her time at Coventry Grammar School, she was possibly most proud of a working-class girl like her being accepted to read Mathematics and Music at Girton College, Cambridge. The close links between music and mathematics would prove to be the basis of all her work and combined in her “deep-rooted physical passion” to make abstract sounds.
Joining the BBC as a trainee studio manager in 1960, Delia soon saw in the still-fledgling Radiophonic Workshop an opportunity to combine her interests in the manipulation of sound and the creation of music from electronic sources. She subsequently remained “temporarily attached” to the workshop for years, producing some of the department’s most remarkable music, as well as regularly deputising for its head, Desmond Briscoe.
Delia was increasingly called upon to provide sound and music for drama and documentary programmes where a standard orchestra was felt to be out of place. Science, arts and educational programmes also increasingly benefited from her abstract style. While attached to the Workshop, Delia also collaborated with composers including Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Roberto Gerhard (on his 1965 Prix Italia winning Anger of Achilles), as well as the poet and dramatist Barry Bermange.
Delia’s passion “to make original, abstract electronic sounds and organise them in a very appealing, acceptable way” was nevertheless increasingly frustrated by the Corporation’s committee mindset and the continued limitations imposed by the Workshop’s day-to-day role as a service provider for other BBC departments. On being told that her music was “too sophisticated” for television audiences, Delia left the Radiophonic Workshop in 1973 and continued to work in fields where the directors were less inhibited, such as film, theatre, “happenings” and original electronic music events.
She encouraged the establishment of Unit Delta Plus, Kaleidophone and Electrophon — private electronic music studios where she worked with the composer and inventor Peter Zinovieff, David Vorhaus and fellow Workshopper Brian Hodgson.
Among her work are soundtracks for the Brighton Festival, the City of London Festival, Yoko Ono’s Wrapping Event, the award-winning Circle of Light, music for Peter Hall’s first film, Work is a 4 Letter Word, special sound and music for plays at the RSC Stratford, Greenwich Theatre and Hampstead Theatre. She was also involved in several of the earliest electronic music events in England, including shows at the Chalk Farm Roundhouse (with Paul McCartney) and the Royal Festival Hall.
By the mid-Seventies, despite the developments of increasingly sophisticated electronic synthesisers, Delia became disillusioned by the apparent future of electronic music and withdrew from the medium, working instead in a bookshop, an art gallery and a museum. By the mid-Nineties, however, she not only came to realise that a younger generation of musicians respected and admired her work, she was sufficiently inspired once again to collaborate with them.
Recently, she said: “Working with people like Sonic Boom on pure electronic music has re-invigorated me. He is from a later generation, but has always had an affinity with the music of the Sixties. One of our first points of contact – the visionary work of Peter Zinovieff – has touched us both, and has been an inspiration. Now without the constraints of doing ‘applied music’, my mind can fly free and pick-up where I left off.”
First published by The Scotsman, 12 July 2001.
