Delia Derbyshire

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Delia Derbyshire plaque

Delia Derbyshire (born May 5, 1937 in Coventry , † July 3, 2001 in Northampton ) was a British composer, musician and producer in the field of electronic music , who for her music for the radio network BBC as well as for experimental works that the development of anticipated electronic dance and pop music (the latter in particular with their band White Noise together with David Vorhaus ) became known.

Her best-known work is the title music for the British television series Doctor Who, composed by Ron Grainer and interpreted electronically by her .

Life

Derbyshire studied music and mathematics at Girton College , Cambridge . After a rejection of a job at Decca Records , justified by the fact that no women were hired in the recording studios at the time, she initially accepted a post at the United Nations in Geneva , but returned to London shortly afterwards.

In the 1960s she worked for the BBC in the so-called BBC Radiophonic Workshop , where she wrote pieces for the third radio program ( Third Program , later BBC Radio 3 ), but also for other radio and television programs . These include many of her most famous works today.

The music for Dr. Who was written in 1963. Derbyshire put Ron Grainer's composition into practice using individual oscillators that were recorded on tape and then manually looped and alienated with simple techniques such as backward playback. A decision by the BBC to leave the workshop staff in anonymity prevented their mention as co-composer, although Grainer, who was enthusiastic about the result, had tried to do so.

Together with Brian Hodgson and Peter Zinnovieff , she founded the Unit Delta Plus project in 1966 , the aim of which was to make electronic music known at contemporary music festivals. In 1967 the group was dissolved again.

In 1968 she founded the band White Noise with David Vorhaus , whose debut album An Electric Storm was released in 1969. It is widely regarded as an influential album that later influenced artists such as Stereolab . She left the band shortly afterwards, later White Noise releases are mostly solo albums by Vorhaus.

In 1973 she left the BBC and after a short work in a recording studio, where she worked on the soundtrack of The Legend of Hell House , for the time being, her career as a composer, first as a radio presenter and later in changing positions. During this time she often struggled with depression and alcoholism . It wasn't until the mid-1990s that she began to write new pieces of music when she was encouraged to do so by the musician Peter Kember . She worked on a new album until her death. On July 3, 2001, she died of kidney failure after surviving breast cancer.

Posthumously, in 2002, part of her work with the BBC was released on the album BBC Radiophonic Music in the 1960s .

In 2008, a long-lasting find of 267 tapes with previously unpublished material by the artist that had been produced in the second half of the 1960s and had only been discovered in a cupboard in her house upon her death, caused a sensation. In addition to the raw material for television productions, this also includes an experimental dance piece that is very similar to today's techno . The English newspaper The Times then referred to her as the Godmother of Electronic Dance Music .

The 2009 film Enter the Void used music from Derbyshire.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Variations on the Dr. Who Theme , article in The Scotsman
  2. ^ Obituary for Derbyshire in The Guardian , July 7, 2001
  3. ↑ Mark Ayres: The Original Doctor Who Theme , A History of the Doctor Who Theme
  4. ↑ Matthew Murphy, White Noise: An Electric Storm , Review for Pitchfork Media , August 3, 2007
  5. ↑ Delia Derbyshire, producer of Doctor Who theme music, has legacy restored , The Times , July 18, 2008
personal data
SURNAME Derbyshire, Delia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English musician in the field of electronic music
DATE OF BIRTH May 5, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Coventry
DATE OF DEATH July 3, 2001
Place of death Northampton