Every Problem Has a Solution

Here is another article from Homeschooling with Heart.  This one talks briefly about my issues with dyslexia as a child and adult.  Here is the link:

Every Problem Has a Solution

10 Creative Ways Grandparents Strengthen Your Homeschool

Here is another article I wrote for Homeschooling with Heart:

10 Creative Ways Grandparents Strengthen Your Homeschool

Delia Derbyshire

I find myself fascinated by the next NOTEable woman.  Four years ago, Jim and I spent countless hours binge watching Doctor Who on Netflix. Then my family had the pleasure of visiting The Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff Bay, Wales three summers ago.  According to my research, the experience has since closed.  For all the negative that surrounded that trip, I am pleased to know we were able to participate in something that has since vanished.  Delia Derbyshire is best known for her work on the Doctor Who Theme.  However, her brilliant mix of mathematics and music was integral in her compositions.  Delia has been referred to as the unsung hero of electronic music. 

Delia Derbyshire

Delia Ann Derbyshire was born in Coventry, England on May 5, 1937.  Her parents were Edward, a sheet-metal worker, and Emma.  In 1940, after the bombing raids in Coventry, Delia was moved to Preston, Lancashire to live with relatives.  She was a bright young girl and was educated at Barr's Hill Grammar School.  She won a scholarship to study mathematics at Girton College in Cambridge.  However, after one year studying mathematics, Delia switched her studies to focus more on music.  She graduated in 1959 with a BA in mathematics and music, having specialized in medieval and modern music history.  She also obtained a LRAM (Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music) in pianoforte, which is the formal name of the piano.  Even though Delia had educational training in music, she credits the radio as her greatest teacher. 

Upon graduation, Delia was interested in sound, music and acoustics, so she applied for a position at Decca Records.  However, she was told the company did not employ women in their recording studios. Instead Delia took a variety of teaching positions for the next year.  First she worked at the UN in Geneva.  Then she taught piano to the children of the British Consul-General and mathematics to the children of Canadian and South American diplomats. Next she taught general education in a primary school in Coventry.  Then Delia went to London and was an assistant in the promotion department of Boosey and Hawkes, a well known British music publisher. In November of 1960, Delia was hired at the BBC as a trainee assistant studio manager.  She first worked on Record Review, which was a magazine program where critics reviewed recordings of classical music.

In 1962 Delia was assigned to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which was a department that produced sounds and new music for radio and television. In 1963 Delia created her most famous work, which was an electronic realization of Ron Grainer's theme song to the Doctor Who series.  She spent two weeks in a converted roller rink in London's Maida Vale assembling the original theme from oscillator swoops and tape splices.  Grainer was so impressed with Delia's work that he tried to get her a co-composer credit  However, the BBC bureaucracy prevented his attempt. Members of the Radiophonic Workshop were intended to be anonymous. She would not get on-screen credit for her work until the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special in 2013.  Delia's version of the Doctor Who theme song was used from 1963 until 1980.  She also composed some of the auxiliary music used in the show.  Blue Veils and Golden Sands and The Delian Mode are two of those compositions.

In 1966, while still working at the BBC, Delia set up Unit Delta Plus with Brian Hodgson, a fellow member of the Radiophonic Workshop, and Peter Zinovieff, founder of Electronic Music Studios (EMS).  Unit Delta Plus was formed to create and promote electronic music to the general public. Unit Delta Plus performed their music at a few experimental and electronic music festivals, including the 1966 The Million Volt Light and Sound Rave.  However, after a problematic performance at the Royal College of Art in 1967, Unit Delta Plus disbanded.

In 1967, Delia assisted Guy Woolfenden with his electronic score for Peter Hall's production of Macbeth with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Then in 1968 Derbyshire and Woolfenden contributed the music to Peter Hall's film Work Is a Four-Letter Word. During this time, Delia also performed at The Chalk Farm Roundhouse, which is a popular music venue in London.

Delia worked again with Brian Hodgson in setting up the Camden town-based independent Kaleidophon Studio with fellow electronic musician David Vorhaus.  In a 1999 interview from Surface Magazine, Delia claimed to have created the sound track at Kaleidophon for Yoko Ono's 20-minute short film, Wrapping Piece, which was based on Ono's wrapping of the lions in Trafalgar Square in London.  Unfortunately a copy of the soundtrack no longer exists.  The studio also produced electronic music for various London theaters.  In 1968 Hodgson, Derbyshire and Vorhaus used the music to produce their first album as the band White Noise.  An Electric Storm, their debut album, is considered important and influential in the development of electronic music. The three also used pseudonyms and contributed to the Standard Music Library. Delia used the pseudonym "Li De la Russe" which is an anagram use of the letters in her name and a reference to her auburn hair.  Delia used this pseudonym when she created music for the British children's science fiction programs Timeslip and The Tomorrow People.  After creating An Electric Storm, Derbyshire and Hodgson left the group and future White Noise albums were solo Vorhaus projects.

In 1972, Delia composed the sounds for Anthony Roland's award-winning film, Circle of Light.  However, Delia continued to be unhappy with her work at the BBC.  Therefore, in 1973 she left the BBC and went to work with her lifelong music friend, Brian Hodgson, at Electrophon Studio.  Both the Electrophon and Kaleidophon studios were named after early electrical musical instruments made by Jorg Mager in pre-war Germany. According to Hodgson, Delia unfortunately did not get much relief working at Electrophon Studio.  In 1975 Delia stopped producing music. Her final works were two short-film soundtracks for video pioneers Madelon Hooykaas's Een Van Die Dagen ("One Of These Days") in 1973 and Elsa Stansfield's Overbruggen ("About Bridges") in 1975.

Due to her desire to escape the music world, Delia left London and worked as a radio operator for the laying of a British Gas pipeline.  Then she worked at an art gallery in Cumbria, England and in a bookshop.  In 1974 she married David Hunter in an attempt to gain local acceptance.  However, the relationship was a disaster.  Interestingly they separate but never divorced.  However, in 1978 Delia returned to London and met Clive Blackburn.  He remained her partner for the rest of her life.  Even though Delia had left the music world, she never stopped writing music.  Blackburn stated, "in private, she never stopped writing music either. She simply refused to compromise her integrity in any way. And ultimately, she couldn't cope. She just burnt herself out. An obsessive need for perfection destroyed her."

Later in her life, Delia had become a cult figure of the younger generation.  Therefore, in 2001 she returned to music, providing sounds used as source material by Pete Kember, former member of the alternative rock band Spacemen 3, on his album Sychrondipity Machine.  In the liner notes of the album, Delia is credited with "liquid paper sounds generated using fourier synthesis of sound based on photo/pixel info (B2wav - bitmap to sound programme)."

Delia was a chronic alcoholic and to many her life was quite chaotic.  She died of renal failure brought on by cancer on July 3, 2001.  After her death, 267 reel-to-reel tapes and a box of 1000 papers were found in her attic.  Delia's hometown, Coventry, named a street, "Derbyshire Way" in her honor in November 2016.  On June 15, 2017 a blue plaque was unveiled at her former home at 104 Cedars Avenue, Coventry England. It was part of a BBC initiative celebrating important musicians.  Then on November 20, 2017 Coventry College awarded Delia Derbyshire  a posthumous honorary doctorate for her pioneering contributions to electronic music.

Teaching Life Skills

Here is a link to my first published article with Homeschooling With Heart.

It was originally published September 18, 2017.

Teaching Life Skills

Hildegard of Bingen

When I was growing up my piano teacher gave me all the classics: Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Debussy, and many others.  I spent many hours practicing a variety of music from all the classic male composers.  Even when I took music in college, there was very little focus on women composers.  Therefore, I naively believed women were too busy being housewives to compose music.  How silly I was!  I believe that as a society we get complacent with what is taught in school.  I have noticed this especially with music education.  Even though I learned a lot from my piano teacher, she was definitely teaching 1950's curriculum to a studio of 1970’s and 1980's babies.  

Scientific and historical discoveries are happening all the time, and some of these women composers were known by the 1970's.  However, we are now able to find instantaneous information using our technical advances.  Believing all the answers are in the pages of an antiquated book is only being naive.  Therefore, I have vowed to share NOTEable women in music history in this blog series.  I consider myself to be a lifelong leaner, so knowledge I believe is power.  The first NOTEable women is Hildegard of Bingen.

Hildegard von Bingen | Line engraving by W. Marshall

Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard was the tenth child born to a noble family, from the Rhineland in Germany, in approximately 1080ce.  Her parents were Mechtild of Merxheim-Nahet and Hildebert of Bermersheim, a family in the service of the Count Meginhard of Sponheim. In that time, it was customary for the tenth child to be promised to the church.  Hildegard entered Disibodenberg, an isolated hilltop Benedictine monastery, when she was a young girl.

Hildegard's Religious Life

On All Saints Day, November 1, 1112, Hildegard entered the monastery under the care of Jutta of Sponheim, daughter of Count Meginhard. Hildegard, Jutta, who was an anchoress (a symbolic anchor to God), and a servant lived inside a small enclosed hut, or hermitage. This one-room shelter only had a small window that led to the outside world. Meals would have been passed through the small opening. They were allowed one meager meal each day in winter and two in summer. Jutta, a countess in her former life and the abbess at Disibodenberg, practiced aestheticism, in which she was completely removed from the world and its views. This was a radical lifestyle, even for the time. However, Hildegard's parents insisted she be placed in the enclosure. It is thought that her poor health contributed to the decision. Therefore, Hildegard was raised on a frugal diet and wore simple clothing while not leaving the one-room shelter. Jutta taught Hildegard to write, read the collection of psalms used in the liturgy, and to chant the Opus Dei. Most likely she also taught Hildegard to play the zither-like string instrument called the psaltery.

Here is an image of what a psaltery would look like.

When Hildegard was 18, she became a Benedictine nun at Disibodenberg.  When Jutta passed away, Hildegard succeeded her as abbess in 1136.   Hildegard's writings were shared across Europe and many would pilgrimage to see the Sybil of the Rhine.  This celebrity status interfered with her work.  Therefore, in approximately 1147, Hildegard left Disibodenberg with several nuns and founded the Benedictine convent of Mount St. Rupert, near Bingen, Germany.  Hildegard died on September 17, 1179. Her Liturgical Feast Day is September 17.

Hildegard the Visionary

Hildegard was known to have visions, even when she was a child. She wrote and illustrated her visions in the book she named Scivias (Know the Ways).  These visions caused her much pain and suffering.  Hildegard shared her visions with Jutta and her tutor, Volmar, a monk.  However, she would wait until she was 42 to approach her colleagues.  Her prophetic visions reached Pope Eugenius III and after conducting thoughtful research he approved her work.  This gave her immediate credence, and people called her Sybil of the Rhine. She would continue to write two more theological books devoted to her visions and prophetic thoughts.

It is now thought that the visions Hildegard was receiving were in fact migraine headaches.  Scholars believe that the documentation surrounding the visions point in this direction.  Hildegard had been a sickly child, and it is thought that she had debilitating migraines her entire life.

Hildegard the Scientist and Doctor

Hildegard was what was considered a polymath, which is someone who has a wide-range of knowledge.  Her scientific and medical writings were not based on visions. Rather, they came from her experience helping in and then leading the monastery's herbal garden and infirmary.  Hildegard would have had access to theoretical information from the monastery's library of Latin texts. She combined physical treatment with holistic methods, and she called her method spiritual healing.  Hildegard organized her methods into two works.  In Physica (Natural History), she describes the scientific and medical properties of various plants, fish, stones, reptiles and mammals. Her second medical work, Causea et Curae, (Causes and Cures) is an exploration of the human body and its connection to the natural world. Hildegard viewed the human body as a garden, and spoke of how to maintain "greening power" (Viriditas) and balance between nature and humans.  Hildegard claimed  that diseases and ailments stem from an unbalanced body.

Pope Benedict formally declared Hildegard a saint on May 10, 2012, by way of "equivalent canonization". On October 7, 2012 he named her an official Doctor of the Church.

Hildegard the Composer

Hildegard is wildly regarded as the first known composer. However, the full extent of her musical compositions were not known until 1979, which was 800 years after her death. Hildegard pushed beyond the norms of what was accepted during her lifetime, and her music is a direct refection of this.  In fact, Hildegard even created her own language she called Lingua Ignota, and she used these words as lyrics to her compositions. Hildegard's chants were different than those written at the same time, because they were composed for women's voices.  She wrote these chants as a counterpart to the Gregorian chants sung by the monks at the Disibodenberg monastery.  Hildegard's chants also stretch the boundaries of vocal ranges, and the music is regarded as very vocally demanding.  Hildegard referred to her 77 lyrical poems collectively as ‘The Harmonious Music of Celestial Revelations’ (Symphoniae Harmoniae Celestium Revelationum).  She was so prolific that when Sequentia, an ensemble for medieval music, recorded Hildegard's catalog in it took 9 CDs and took 30 years to complete the project.     

Further Learning

If you are interested in listening to the compositions of Hildegard of Bingen, I highly suggest the list recommended in an article written by the Catholic World Report.  Christopher S. Morrissey also takes the time to provide English translations for his playlist: A Beginner's Guide to the Music of St. Hildegard of Bingen.