BBC Radiophonic Workshop : A Retrospective
by William L. Weir (Music 781.546 Wei)
In the late 1950s, electronic music
was still mostly the domain of academic specialists, not something that most
average citizens had even heard before, but upon the start of the BBC
Radiophonic Workshop, the sounds being produced in electronic sound labs
started making their way into conventional radio and television programming in
England. Much of their work was created as background mood music, but they
produced a few themes, too, such as the “Doctor Who” theme, written by Ron Grainger
and produced by Delia Derbyshire using the magical devices of the Radiophonic
Workshop. That was 1963, and I think it’s fair to say that those sounds became
a profound influence on what we all think of as “science fiction music” ever
since.
There have been some more recent
books written about some of the composers affiliated with the BBC Radiophonic
Workshop like Derbyshire and co-founder of the Workshop Daphne Oram, but it’s
been a while since any books addressed the overall Workshop. Fortunately, Bloomsbury’s
33 1/3 series has brought a little attention back to them with their latest
book in the series, which covers the 2008 2-CD compilation of music they
produced, which you can borrow from the Polley Music Library.
I think this might be the first time
we’ve talked about a book from the regular 33 1/3 series, so let’s start with
the general structure of these: each book discusses one album, typically by way
of some context about the artist and where the record falls within their
career, and often mentions other artists who have talked about the album being
influential or otherwise important to them. They’re small books, slightly
larger than a CD in size and typically around 150 pages in length. I think of
them as really fun companions for reading while listening to the album in
question, but they’re also generally good as short introductions to the artist,
album, and even genre being discussed, too. We have quite a few of them at the
Polley Music Library, covering a fairly wide range of pop, rock, hip-hop,
alternative, and classical records.
This one for the BBC Radiophonic
Workshop is a little unusual, though: unlike the rest of the series, the book
is addressing a compilation album. This choice is essentially a conceit to
write about the music, history and influence of the Workshop more generally,
which is a good idea for focusing on a group who were intentionally very
behind-the-scenes for most of their existence. If one wanted to write about a
single album by the Workshop that had a significant influence, their first
record from 1968 (known as the “pink album”) would probably have been the best
choice, but that would disregard how their approach and music continued to
evolve in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. So it’s an unorthodox pick for this series,
but it makes sense. Having said that, I do wish author William Weir could have
picked a different compilation of the music, because this particular one is out
of print and hard to find. It doesn’t even appear to be on Apple Music,
Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, or Hoopla. So if you want to listen along while you
read, you’ll probably have to settle for other albums of the Workshop’s music
instead, or more random songs available through streaming. For what it’s worth,
library patrons can access 4 Workshop albums through Hoopla, so consider that
option while you’re reading.
After a brief introduction in which
Weir explains his choice of this compilation as our recorded point of
discussion, he leaps into the days before the Radiophonic Workshop was founded.
As it turns out, the foundation was fraught with internal struggles. Starting
as early as 1957, BBC composer Daphne Oram had been sneaking back into her
office late at night to put together unique new electronic sounds. If you
recall our recent recommendation about the new Bob Moog biography, this era is
before synthesizers were commercially available—Moog’s first modular synth
didn’t arrive until 1964. Other synthesizers were still enormous devices only
found in research university labs, and the BBC had nothing of the sort on hand.
Still, Oram had a familiarity with the basics of how synth music and tape music
were being made, and she was moving tape machines, oscillators, and filters of
her own design onto the empty 6th floor of the building after hours, creating
new sounds using the early electronic music techniques of the time, and
returning the equipment to its normal locations before dawn. Upon showing her
work to her management in the Music Department, she found that they weren’t
particularly excited, but the Drama Department took her ideas in as sound
effects and background environmental sound for their productions. With their
help, and particularly that of their sound manager Desmond Briscoe, they
produced a radio version of the Samuel Beckett play “All That Fall,” which was
very well received. Late that year, the BBC made Oram their one-woman
“radiophonic unit,” and on April 1st of the following year, the official
Radiophonic Workshop opened with a small staff and some equipment.
The BBC was enjoying the inclusion
of these sounds on television and radio programs, but in these earliest days,
it’s funny to consider how they still had a certain degree of fear around
electronic music. Staff were limited to 3 or 6 month assignments in the
Radiophonic Workshop, lest the continued daily exposure to electronic sounds
push them to the brink of sanity! Credit for productions of the Workshop was
attributed to the Workshop itself instead of individual composers. Ultimately,
Oram left her newly-invented Workshop in January of 1959 to open her own
studio, where she produced music for advertising as well as her own serious
music. She also invented “Oramics” on her own, a fascinating kind of synthesis
based on drawing images that could be fed into her synthesizer to produce
sound. In this part of the story, Weir makes what I think is one of the most
important points of the book: while modern electronic music in this era was
often considered to be a kind of off-putting music that audiences surely
wouldn’t like, the reality is that it’s all about the presentation. Perhaps the
abstract, alien sounds of early electronic music were a challenge for audiences
in concert halls, but integrated into radio and television projects, they were
very evocative.
One thing worth mentioning about
the Radiophonic Workshop is how it provided opportunities for women in what was
then a very male-dominated industry. While credit for recordings made at the
Workshop was attributed to the workshop itself, over time we have come to know
who many of the composers were, and they included founder Daphne Oram,
Maddalena Fagandini, whose anonymous work with producer George Martin created
one of the earliest electronic music singles, “Time Beat,” in 1962, influential
composer Delia Derbyshire, whose contributions throughout the 60s dominated the
Workshop’s sound, and Elizabeth Parker, the last standing composer at the
Workshop when it was closed in 1998. These women contributed enormously to the
popularization of electronic music internationally. It’s depressing to know that
a composer as dynamic as Derbyshire, for example, was rejected applying for
work at Decca Records before joining the BBC, simply because they had a policy
against hiring women in their recording studios. The creativity and confidence
they all showed through the Workshop helped to level the playing field for
future generations.
As synthesizers gradually became
more familiar to the public in the late 60s and throughout the 70s, it’s
noteworthy that the Radiophonic Workshop mostly continued to use their own homemade
gadgets and tape machine techniques to produce their music. As Weir notes,
these early synths like the Moog tended to be based around playing on a fairly
traditional keyboard, and the Workshop was more interested in the total freedom
afforded them by using practices without traditional musical interfaces. This
is probably one of the most significant reasons their work remained unique even
as they entered eras where synth-based music started to become commonplace.
Manipulating sounds on tape left them with more freedom, too — they could
listen to sounds all around us — city sounds, environmental sounds, traditional
special effects like footsteps — and transform them through editing tape or
changing its playback speed. While sampling technology eventually evolved to
the point that many electronic artists now include such practices in their
work, the Workshop was a model for incorporating these once-arcane techniques
into more contemporary music. But as time went on, the Workshop gradually
transitioned away from tape and toward synths, as did the rest of the musical
world. These new devices, which eventually became capable of doing much more
than the simple synthesis of early days, gradually replaced both the need for
tape techniques, and then the need for the Workshop altogether. Virtually
anyone, after all, could make similar sounds now with a modern synth by the
90s.
But the impact of the work done by
this pioneers lives on. They are largely responsible for the listening public
getting used to hearing such sounds. While sometimes this doesn’t seem like a
“musical pursuit” in the usual sense, Weir points out how deeply this influence
could be ingrained: “These weren’t the sounds people heard when they
attended a concert or put on a favorite record. It’s what they heard while
doing pretty much everything else — gong to school, relaxing with family,
driving their cars. By normalizing these sounds, the BBC gave others the raw
material to take electronic music in a million new directions.”.
(If you enjoy this, you may also
wish to try Switched On: Bob Moog and the Synthesizer Revolution by
Albert Glinsky, or An Individual Note: Of Music, Sound, and Electronics by
Daphne Oram.)
( publisher’s official 33 1/3
series web site )
Recommended
by Scott S.
Polley Music Library
Have you read or listened to
this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!
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