Radiophonic Workshop Research Articles

The Prisoner: A missing link in England’s history of electronic music

This article documents the circumstances surrounding the composition of the soundtrack to the theatrical production of Bridget Boland’s The Prisoner in 1954. Roberto Gerhard’s soundtrack to The Prisoner is likely the first piece to utilise ensemble and magnetic tape, and as such potentially the first live performance of musique concrète in England, taking place a year before Gerhard’s significantly more infamous electronic score to King Lear, produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and four years prior to the establishment of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. No master recording or score has been located and details relating to the soundtrack are sparse. This paper attempts to collect available documentation relating to this production, as well as provide new insights relating to potential draft materials stored in the Roberto Gerhard Tape Archive and a previously unknown connection between the production and Pierre Henry and the Groupe de Reserches de Musique Concrète.

Noise, narration and nose-pegs: Adapting Shakespeare for radio

The BBC’s first director general, John Reith, believed the plays of Shakespeare were perfect for radio, with ‘little in the way of setting and scenery’ and relying chiefly on plot and acting. However, a closer look at the texts reveals that many require a good deal of adaptation to work in sound only. That has not stopped BBC radio producers creating hundreds of productions over the past century. Instead, it has spurred many of them on to greater creativity. Initially reliant on narration, producers began to devise a wide range of techniques to make Shakespeare comprehensible without visuals. These include specially devised sound effects, soundscapes and music, as well as distorting the actors’ voices in various ways, including using nose-pegs and the assistance of the Radiophonic Workshop. This article uses audio and written evidence to uncover those techniques and examines how successful they have been deemed to be.

‘The Same Trade as Mozart’: Convincing the sceptics of electronic music’s value

In August 1969, the music documentary series Workshop (1964–78) focused on electronic music in a 55-minute-long film titled ‘The Same Trade as Mozart’. Produced and directed by David Buckton, the film included interviews with composers Karlheinz Stockhausen, Tristram Cary and Justin Connolly; BBC Radiophonic Workshop staff Desmond Briscoe, David Cain and John Baker, and the Workshop’s founder, Daphne Oram; and Peter Zinovieff, director of EMS (Electronic Music Studios). It presented electronic music in a number of contexts, such as education, pop production and live performance. Technological change in music has often provoked hostility among the public and critics, and the rapid advancement of electronic music post-Second World War was no exception. Adopting a mode of analysis more commonly encountered in studies of the public communication of science, this article considers ‘The Same Trade as Mozart’ as an attempt by electronic music’s advocates, such as those listed above, to convince sceptics of its value. While sceptical responses to the presence of new technologies in music have been widely noted and theorized by scholars in science and technology studies, we call attention to the strategies employed by the advocates of such technologies to defend themselves against such criticisms, including humour, heuristic explanations and a focus on electronic music’s educational and thus social value. The use of computers in electronic music was a new and contentious development in the field, requiring a greater degree of advocacy from its proponents. We examine how the computer’s role in composition is presented in ‘The Same Trade as Mozart’, compared with other media portrayals of computing in the 1960s. Drawing on theories of filmed musical performance, we discuss how visual tropes of ‘classical’ music are used in ‘The Same Trade as Mozart’ to challenge preconceptions about the relationships between composers, musicians and new technologies.

Haunted Science: The BBC Radiophonic Workshop and the lost futures of hauntological music

This article will explore the particular sense of nostalgia evoked by the sound and music of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop for a utopian future that has been irrevocably lost; a future contextualized in Britain by the post-war consensus and its attendant narratives of public service broadcasting, state planning and benevolent social engineering. I examine the relationship between the workshop’s output and the contemporary cultural experience Mark Fisher defined as ‘hauntology’, before investigating the workshop’s influence on the hauntological music of contemporary artists who use radiophonic sounds to recover a sense of the future lost as a result of the political and economic transformation of Britain which followed the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, and which would eventually lead to the decommissioning of the workshop itself in March 1998. In addition, this article considers the workshop’s idiosyncratic output in relation to electronic dance music which, until recently, had been considered at the vanguard of musical futurism. However, in contrast to electronic dance music, ‘sonic hauntology’ looks to the past for its engagement with the ideas about the future; in particular, the technological optimism associated with the post-war modernization of Britain, such as the belief in a paternalistic, yet benevolent state and in the progressive application of technology. In these ways, hauntological musicians place considerable significance on the sounds, music and other cultural signifiers encountered through the workshop’s productions, such as the use of analogue media, public information films, and science fiction and horror programmes, from the period in which BBC broadcasting dominated the British media landscape.

TAPE LEADERS: EXCAVATING EARLY BRITISH ELECTRONIC MUSIC

AbstractThis article questions the narrow representation of the history of much early British electronic music, and challenges the way historians and writers have tended to cherry-pick and lionize certain individuals, while ignoring all the others that fall outside of the limited and regularly repeated version of events. It is an extension of the research presented in my compendium Tape Leaders, conceived during 2010 with the aspiration to catalogue all the early British electronic music composers who became active before 1970, presenting a biographical entry for as many experimenters as I could trace and documenting more than 100 individuals, including hobbyist tape activists, who have never before received recognition. Tape Leaders presents a completely different picture to the consensus that positions the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and a handful of others, at the centre of electronic activity in Britain, with allegedly very little else happening until universities caught on at the end of the 1960s and began to offer courses and studio facilities.

Thoughts on autonomy, sound and artistic compromise: three experimental radio broadcasts of poetry with radiophonic sound by Delia Derbyshire (1965–1966)

This article explores three experimental radio programmes made for the BBC during the mid-1960s. Each one contains work by the electronic music composer Delia Derbyshire who worked as part of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop: a studio located in the national public broadcaster. Derbyshire is often presented as a pioneer in the history of electronic music but the lack of a coherent body of musical works positions her outside the canon. I argue that the apparent lack is an integral part of her history that could be affirmed to challenge assumptions surrounding the aesthetic value of autonomy.

Creative layers and continuities: A case study of Nicole Lizée and the Kronos Quartet

This study examines the creative layers and continuities evident within the composition and rehearsal processes of Nicole Lizée’s Golden Age of the Radiophonic Workshop (Fibre-Optic Flowers), written for the Kronos Quartet in 2012. Lizée’s compositional approach to the historic and the new, and the mechanical and the human, are interpreted through Simon Emmerson’s three themes of combination, transformation, and control, and his three “impulses within composition” that combine live and acousmatic soundworlds – integration, antithesis, and co-existence. These concepts also help to articulate the way the players engage with the physical, psychological, and expressive demands of the piece. Discussions arising from the Kronos Quartet rehearsing the piece with the composer reveal how extensions are made to the performers’ mind and body experiences when they are required both to initiate and integrate sounds emanating from unfamiliar, analogue machines into their acoustic, yet amplified soundworld. Creative layers and continuities are seen to evolve from compositional experimentation and from composer–performer and co-performer dialogues in rehearsal in the BBC Maida Vale studio prior to the world premiere at a BBC Prom concert on 24 July 2012.

International Perspectives on the Historic Intersections of Electroacoustic Music and the Radio Medium

Radio studios including Club d'Essai de la Radiodiffusion–Television Française (Paris), Studio für Elektronische Musik (Cologne), BBC Radiophonic Workshop (London) and others have historically played a key role in the development of international approaches to electroacoustic music. Nevertheless few publications explore the pre-musique-concrète sound-based experimental works of the 1920s and 1930s arising from activities undertaken at radio studios, or the dimensions, properties, implications and impact of the radio medium itself. This article explores the impact of the radio medium on creative practice and argues that radio art is not inherently a subset of sonic art, as it may first appear when nuanced from electroacoustic music practice, but can be viewed as its own art form with idiosyncratic international standpoints and transdisciplinary properties. In addition to a historical discussion, this article offers an insight into the potential for radio art practice to cross-pollinate with music practice and explore new creative territory and hybrid working modalities.

‘Way out-of This World!’ Delia Derbyshire, Doctor Who and the British Public's Awareness of Electronic Music in the 1960s

The composer and musician Delia Derbyshire (1937–2001) remains most famous for her arrangement and realisation of Ron Grainer's title theme for Doctor Who, Yet although providing the theme tune with its distinctive sounds, which would be featured in the programme's titles from 1963 until 1980, Derbyshire provided little else in terms of music for the Doctor's adventures during her time at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. This article considers the impact of the Doctor Who theme tune on Derbyshire's career and the interest in electronic music that it generated amongst the British public in the 1960s.

Music, Poetry, Propaganda: Constructing French Cultural Soundscapes at the BBC during the Second World War. By Claire Launchbury.

Claire Launchbury’s Music, Poetry, Propaganda offers a richly contextualized and highly interdisciplinary examination of the propagandistic deployment of French culture in music broadcasting and concert life in wartime Britain and France. The book joins a growing body of literature, pioneered by Jenny Doctor’s The BBC and Ultramodern Music 1922–1936: Shaping a Nation’s Tastes (Cambridge, 1999), that examines BBC music policy and practice while also addressing the broader question of how radio changed music-making and musical meaning during the twentieth century. Like Louis Niebur’s Special Sound: The Creation and Legacy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (New York and Oxford, 2010), Launchbury’s book attends to the intersections between music, literature, and drama in the BBC’s output; it thus considers not only broadcasts produced by the BBC Music Department, but also the work of the Talks Department and the European Service, where, as Launchbury argues convincingly, music played a subtle but critical role in broadcasting to France.

The Oramics Machine: From vision to reality

The pioneering contributions of Daphne Oram to visual music, notably the construction of her unique synthesiser known as the Oramics Machine during the 1960s, have yet to be fully recognised. The development of this synthesiser, in terms of both the creative objectives that inspired its design and also the functional characteristics of the resulting technology, is all the more remarkable for being the product of highly individual endeavour, working entirely without the support and resources normally provided by an institution or a commercial manufacturer. Oram's background in both music and electronics was to prove invaluable in this regard, and her appointment as the founding director of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1958, having previously lobbied within the organisation for such a facility for several years, provides testament to her standing in both regards. Her decision within a year of appointment to resign from this post and establish her own private studio specifically to develop Oramics is indicative of her determination and commitment to explore new horizons in the medium of electronic music, and this paper provides a perspective of her achievements, drawing on materials in the Oram archive that have hitherto not been studied.

Special Sound: The Creation and Legacy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. by Louis Niebur

Special Sound: The Creation and Legacy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. by Louis Niebur

Three Ring Circus: the ur-text of modernist television drama

Three Ring Circus (BBC, 2 February 1961) was a BBC Scotland production, written by Jack Gerson and directed by James MacTaggart. A sixty-minute studio drama in which a man with amnesia seeks to recover his identity, Three Ring Circus has been described by John McGrath as the ‘ur-drama’ in a tradition of experimental television drama produced at the BBC in the early 1960s. What is remarkable about the production, especially for a 1961 studio drama, is its innovative, non-naturalistic style. Virtuoso long-take studio sequences alternate with modernist montage sequences to create a kaleidoscopic fantasy world, embellished by sound effects from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The precocious stylistic innovations of Three Ring Circus led to an invitation for MacTaggart to join the BBC Drama Department in London, where he produced a number of ground-breaking drama series prior to becoming the first producer on The Wednesday Play. This essay examines the origins of the experimental tradition in British television drama at the BBC in the late 1950s and early 1960s, analyzing sequences from Three Ring Circus in order to establish the veracity of McGrath's claim that the play is the founding text of modernist television drama.

Notes for Notes

Notes for Notes H. Robert Cohen and Barbara Dobbs Mackenzie The Music Library Association has announced its publication awards for 2007. The Vincent H. Duckles Award for the best book-length bibliography or other research tool in music published in 2007 was presented to David Russell Williams and C. Matthew Balensuela for Music Theory from Boethius to Zarlino: A Bibliography and Guide (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2007). The MLA Publications Awards Committee noted that this “concluding volume in a decades-long effort to survey the landscape of Western music theory . . . gently introduces readers to what might otherwise be unfamiliar and daunting material. The authors summarize the major works of some 120 medieval and Renaissance theorists in language that is both clear and precise, and their helpful lists of secondary literature, assembled from an impressively broad array of sources, are coded to highlight introductory readings. As computerized keyword searching increasingly fragments the research process, the context provided by this volume will prove ever more valuable to non-specialists and scholars alike.” The Eva Judd O’Meara Award for the best review published in Notes in 2007 was awarded to Louis Niebur for his review essay “The BBC Radiophonic Workshop: Recent Reissues of British Electronic Music from 1955–1996.” The review appeared in Notes 63, no. 3 (March 2007): 912–23. The committee stated that “Louis Niebur’s review essay on the Radiophonic Workshop provides a delightfully readable introduction to an influential but little-known chapter of twentieth-century music culture. As the British Broadcasting Corporation’s in-house electronic music studio, the RW met the growing demand for new electro-acoustical sounds by creating thousands of works for television and radio between the years of 1955 and 1996. Through his survey of recent compact disc and DVD reissues, Niebur effectively chronicles the pioneering and farreaching achievements of the Workshop, its largely anonymous composers, and their equipment and techniques. His balanced, descriptive insights inspire the reader to want to know more about the RW, to hear more, and above all, to care about this intriguing piece of electronic music history.” The Richard S. Hill Award for the best article on music librarianship or article of a music-bibliographic nature was awarded to Edward Komara, for his article “Culture Wars, Canonicity, and A Basic Music Library,” which appeared in Notes (vol. 64, no. 2 [December 2007]: 232–47). The committee commented that “Komara examines the debate [End Page 754] over the phrase ‘culture wars’ and how the issue of canonicity affects the acquisitions component of A Basic Music Library. In citing musicological works that focus on canonicity and espousing a skeptical view of the multiplicity of canons and ‘musics,’ Komara displays exceptional scholarly facility, and his assertion that ‘basic’ does not have to mean ‘canonic’ is welcome wisdom in an increasingly digital age. The timeliness and focus of this article, coupled with clear, concise, and well-formulated arguments, make it a relevant and convincing read, especially for those who work in the area of collection management.” Other MLA Awards. The 2009 Dena Epstein Award for Library and Archival Research in American Music was given to two recipients, Lara Housez and Maria Cristina Fava. Ms. Housez is a Ph.D. candidate in musicology at the Eastman School of Music, is completing a dissertation entitled “Becoming Sondheim: From Forum to Company.” Her research examines Sondheim’s career and musical growth during the 1960s—a “dark decade” that eventually resulted in the solidification of Sondheim’s mature musical identity. Though much has already been written about Sondheim, this project explores not what Sondheim did, but how he developed as an artist, drawing on a variety of disparate influences and the experiences of trial and error. Housez will examine primary source material at the Wisconsin Historical Society and the New York Public Library in order to provide a much-needed scholarly approach to this portion of Sondheim’s life. When combined with Housez’s own practical experience with the theater, this research promises to provide a unique important insight into an important American composer. She will use the funding to provide travel money to assist with visits to Wisconsin and New York. Ms. Fava, also a Ph...

The BBC Radiophonic Workshop: Recent Reissues of British Electronic Music From 1955–1996

With the CD release this year by the British Library of Samuel Beckett's seven works written for BBC radio comes a chance to reevaluate the commercial releases from the effects studio that made these recordings possible, the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) Radiophonic Workshop. The Radiophonic Workshop (RW) was the BBC's in-house electronic music studio from 1958 to 1998. During those years, the workshop's largely anonymous composers wrote thousands of works for television and exerting an enormous influence on the development of electronic music in both the popular and, to a lesser extent, academic realms. For millions of people, including musicians and composers such as The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Luciano Berio, Vladimir Ussachevsky, and more recently, Orbital and the Pet Shop Boys, the RW was British electronic music. The kind of primitive but effective electronic tape music and effects employed in several of Beckett's works, available now for the first time on CD, quickly shifted to a more mainstream tonal style, before finally settling on a purely synthesizer-based model of composition by the early 1970s. This essay will sample a collection of recordings and DVDs from throughout the RW's history. In the beginning, the RW was in some ways the equivalent of the more famous Groupe de recherches musicales formed by Pierre Schaeffer for the production of musique concrete at the Parisian Radiodiffusion television francaise. The two studios initially shared similar methods of musical production, i.e., tape manipulation of recorded sounds and minimal electronic generation. In this, both studios differed from the predominantly electronically generated works emerging from the Westdeutscher Rundfunk studio as populated by composers like Herbert Eimert and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Both the French and German studios, however, were accompanied by associated schools of composition; Schaeffer's complex system of objets sonores guided his studio's output, and the Germans saw their music as the continuation of the development of serial techniques. No such philosophical mandate controlled the direction of the RW's productions. Rather, owing to the overwhelmingly hostile reaction both French and German electronic music received from within the BBC's Music Department, individuals from within that same organization's Drama and Features Departments worked to create a commensurate electronic studio in Britain. Working outside the heated contemporary musical debates of the time, these two departments were able to forge a studio free from the particular ideological musical forces at work on the Continent. Two BBC producers in particular were the driving force behind its creation, broadcasting several early experiments in electronic music as part of dramatic productions. Douglas Cleverdon and Donald McWhinnie found inspiration in Schaeffer's experimentation with manipulated sounds, seeing a vast new area of fit for exploration. The growing desire in the mid-1950s for a wider array of effects in dramatic productions reflected a larger desire by British producers and playwrights for a new kind of production: what McWhinnie called pure radio, a blending of spoken dialogue, effects, and music into an entirely organic whole, and only possible in the medium of radio. (1) The emergence and popularity of a revolutionary new avant-garde continental theatre in the mid-fifties, the Theatre of the Absurd, gave these producers a new willingness to invest their productions with an anti-realist aesthetic that embraced techniques geared towards the odd, surreal, and distorted. This world, borrowed and expanded upon from comedy and science fiction, existed as a bridge between music and reality. By alienating its audience from a familiar reality, the works combined electronics and words in a way unique to Britain. The first of the productions utilizing radiophonic sound (the name chosen by the BBC for these new electro-musical effects in an attempt to avoid comparison with both Germanic elektronische Musik and French musique concrete) to gain serious critical and popular attention was Beckett's All That Fall (1957), the first play on the British Library's CD collection and Beckett's first work specifically for the medium of radio. …

Daphne Oram: innovator, writer and composer

The main focus of this article is the work of Daphne Oram, composer of electronic music, who founded the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1958 and went on to run her own independent studio from where she composed several significant pieces of electronic music, designed and built a new audio recording machine, and lectured and wrote extensively on electronic and concrète music. The paper will endeavour to show that Ms Oram is deserving of recognition as an innovative composer of electronic and concrète music, as well as possessing interesting and valuable insight into the practice and theory of this medium. It will critically examine her work, and methods for achieving completed pieces, and compare and contrast her compositional work and the thinking behind it, to the work of other significant composers of the time.

All manner of sounds [ellipsis (horizontal)

We are all familiar with the electronic music used in many radio and television programmes, although the means by which it is produced are less well known. This article gives a brief history of the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, and the equipment and techniques in use are explained