Delia Derbyshire

About

From Wikipedia:

Delia Ann Derbyshire (5 May 1937 – 3 July 2001) was an English musician and composer of electronic music. She carried out notable work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop during the 1960s, including her electronic arrangement of the theme music to the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who. She has been referred to as “the unsung heroine of British electronic music”, having influenced musicians including Aphex Twin, the Chemical Brothers and Paul Hartnoll of Orbital. […]

BBC Radiophonic Workshop

In November 1960, she joined the BBC as a trainee assistant studio manager and worked on Record Review, a magazine programme where critics reviewed classical music recordings. She said: “Some people thought I had a kind of second sight. One of the music critics would say, ‘I don’t know where it is, but it’s where the trombones come in’, and I’d hold it up to the light and see the trombones and put the needle down exactly where it was. And they thought it was magic.” She then heard about the Radiophonic Workshop and decided that was where she wanted to work. This news was received with some puzzlement by the heads in Central Programme Operation because people were usually “assigned” to the Radiophonic Workshop. But in April 1962, she was assigned there in Maida Vale, where for eleven years she would create music and sound for almost 200 radio and television programmes.

In August 1962, she assisted composer Luciano Berio at a two-week summer school at Dartington Hall, for which she borrowed several dozen items of BBC equipment. One of her first works, and most widely known, was her 1963 electronic realisation of a score by Ron Grainer for the theme of the Doctor Who series, one of the first television themes to be created and produced entirely with electronics.

When Grainer heard it, he was so amazed by her arrangement of his theme that he asked: “Did I really write this?”, to which Derbyshire replied: “Most of it”. Grainer attempted to credit her as co-composer, but was prevented by the BBC bureaucracy because they preferred that members of the workshop remain anonymous. She was not credited on-screen for her work until Doctor Who‘s 50th anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor. Derbyshire’s original arrangement served as the Doctor Who main theme for its first seventeen series, from 1963 to 1980. The theme was reworked over the years, to her horror, because the only version that had her approval was the original. Delia also composed music for other BBC programmes, including Blue Veils and Golden Sands and The Delian Mode. The Doctor Who story Inferno reused some of Derbyshire’s music originally composed for other productions.

In 1964–65, she collaborated with the British artist and playwright Barry Bermange for the BBC’s Third Programme to produce four Inventions for Radio, a series of collages of people describing their thoughts on dreams, belief in God, the possibility of life after death, and the experience of old age, voiced over an electronic soundscape.
In 1966, working with composer George Newson, she collaborated on the BBC experimental radio drama, The Man Who Collected Sounds with producer Douglas Cleverdon.

Unit Delta Plus

In 1966 while working at the BBC, Derbyshire, 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 experimental and electronic music festivals, including the 1966 The Million Volt Light and Sound Rave, at which The Beatles’ “Carnival of Light” had its only public performance.

In 1966, she recorded a demo with Anthony Newley entitled “Moogies Bloogies”, but Newley moved to the United States and the song was never released. After a troubled performance at the Royal College of Art, in 1967, the unit disbanded. […]

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Barry Miles’ Paul McCartney biography says that Delia was approached by Paul to arrange a backing track for “Yesterday”.

He never came to the workshop. I always did work outside and he came to (Peter) Zinovieff’s studio and I played him some of my stuff – that’s all… but it was the phrase length he was interested in. I’ve always been non-conformist: I don’t like the 8 bar or the 12 bar standard thing. They’re all beautiful in their own way, but why not explore different phrase lengths? (Paul) never came to the workshop… Brian Jones did – golly! There we were with our hand tuned oscillators and he went into it with his frilly cuffs and things as though he could play it as a musical instrument! He died very young and I cried buckets. Pink Floyd (came to the workshop) and I took them down to Zinovieff’s place.

Delia Derbyshire – Interview by John Cavanagh for Boazine 7 – From Delia Derbyshire: On Our Wavelength – WikiDelia

McCartney said “it occurred to me to have the BBC Radiophonic Workshop do the backing track to [“Yesterday”] and me just sing over an electronic quartet. I went down to see them. The woman who ran it was very nice and they had a shed at the bottom of the garden where most of the work was done…It would have been very interesting to do, but I never followed it up” (from “Many Years From Now”)

From Paul McCartney asked creator of Dr Who theme to remake Yesterday | Paul McCartney | The Guardian, March 22, 2013:

Paul McCartney has revealed how he once asked electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire – creator of the Doctor Who theme music – to remake one of the Beatles’ most famous songs, Yesterday.

The former Beatle said that as a fan of experimental music he wanted the BBC Radiophonic Workshop composer to create a different version of the song.

“I even found out where Miss Derbyshire lived, and went round to visit her,” McCartney told Q magazine. “We even went into the hut at the bottom of her garden.

“It was full of tape machines and funny instruments. My plan in meeting her was to do an electronic backing for my song Yesterday.

“We’d already recorded it with a string quartet, but I wanted to give the arrangement electronic backing.”

Derbyshire is hailed as one of the most important figures in the history of electronic music in the UK. As part of the Radiophonic Workshop – the avant-garde wing of the BBC’s sound effects department – she created the distinctive signature tune for new TV series Doctor Who in 1963 […]

In 1967 Derbyshire’s work as a member of electronic outfit Unit Delta Plus shared a bill with that of the Beatles at a happening at the Roundhouse in north London. The Beatles created a 14-minute track called Carnival of Light for the Million Volt Light and Sound Rave that has never been officially released.

McCartney did not explain why nothing ever emerged from his encounter with Derbyshire in her garden hut, but said: “The Radiophonic Workshop, I loved all that, it fascinated me, and still does.” […]

There is a sense of “what if” with Derbyshire’s life and one incident in particular has gained momentum with the publication of Paul McCartney’s 1997 biography, “Many Years from Now” written by Barry Miles. According to Miles, McCartney had listened to a lot of electronic music, and “loved” it.) The book states that McCartney said “it occurred to me to have the BBC Radiophonic Workshop do the backing track to [“Yesterday”] and me just sing over an electronic quartet. I went down to see them. The woman who ran it[152] was very nice and they had a shed at the bottom of the garden where most of the work was done…It would have been very interesting to do, but I never followed it up”.[153] As outlined clearly by Mark Brend though,[154] while Derbyshire and McCartney DID meet, given the location McCartney speaks of, the meeting was after the release of “Yesterday”.[155] The “shed at the bottom of the garden” refers to the studio in Peter Zinovieff’s house in Putney, home to Unit Delta Plus – Derbyshire, Hodgson and Zinovieff – who formed in 1966, a year after the release of “Yesterday”. So at most, McCartney could only have been talking about a re-release of the song. Derbyshire herself confirms that they met at Zinovieff’s and that she played him some of her music, “he never did come to the Workshop, he came to Zinovieff’s studio and I played him some of my stuff, that’s all”.[156] Derbyshire and McCartney met again, at the “Million Volt Light and Sound Rave” at Chalk Farm in 1967. On this occasion, McCartney sent a tape to Brian Hodgson, a sound collage called “Carnival of Light”, a 14-minute experimental exercise in overlaying sounds, music, and shouting, for inclusion in the concert.

From Breege Brennan’s thesis – WikiDelia

Last updated on November 21, 2023