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.