5 things to know about Daphne Oram, the visionary pioneer in electronic music |
Daphne Oram (1925–2003) was one of Britain’s most important early electronic composers. Oram trained first as a pianist and composer and turned down a place at the Royal College of Music to work at the BBC, where late-night tape experiments and hands-on work with microphones and oscillators drew her from conventional composition into pioneering electronic sound.
In 1958 she co-founded the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, a studio set up to create sound effects and electronic scores for radio and TV. On the wall she pinned a passage from Francis Bacon’s 17th-century utopia New Atlantis about imaginary sound-houses where scientists manipulate echoes, invent new instruments and transmit sound “in strange lines and distances”.
Bacon’s sound houses are often read now as a prophetic sketch of the modern electronic music studio.
The Workshop would famously go on to produce the Doctor Who theme, but Oram’s time there was brief. Less than a year after its opening she left, frustrated by bureaucracy and the institution’s small, utilitarian vision for what electronic sound could be.
Despite her key influence on electronic composition, Oram’s name still isn’t as mainstream as some of the ideas and technologies she helped to normalise.
This December marks her centenary, and her archive is sparking new works, releases and performances, proving her ideas are still alive and still........