Delia Derbyshire was an English musician and composer of electronic music. She is best known for her electronic realisation of the theme music for Doctor Who and her pioneering work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
Derbyshire was born in 1937 in Coventry, England. Her intelligence became apparent at an early age, and by the age of four she was teaching others at her primary school to read and white. At the age of eight, Derbyshire began playing the piano. She attended Barr’s Hill Grammar School and won a scholarship to study mathematics at Girton College, Cambridge. In her second year, she switched to music and graduated with a degree in mathematics and music in 1959. Derbyshire wished to pursue a career in “sound, music and acoustics” and applied for a position at Decca Records only to be denied a position due to her gender. Derbyshire took a position at the UN in Geneva where she first taught piano to children of the British Consul-General and mathematics to the children of Canadian and South American diplomats. She then worked as an assistant to Gerald G. Gross, who was then Head of Plenipotentiary and General Administrative Radio Conferences at the International Telecommunications Union.
In 1960, Derbyshire returned to Coventry where she taught in a primary school before moving to London to work as an assistant in the promotional department of music publishers Boosey & Hawkes. Late in that same year, she joined the BBC as a trainee assistant studio manager working on Record Review, a programme in which classical music recording were reviewed. Derbyshire was hugely successful in her role, and “Some people thought I had a kind of second sight” in knowing where to introduce sound, and exactly what it should be. Two years later, after making an unheard of request to be transferred, Derbyshire was assigned to work in the Radiophonic Workshop where she was the first person in the department with high music qualifications. Initially, she wasn’t supposed to be creating music but her abilities led to her creating music and sound for almost 200 radio and television programs.
In 1963, Derbyshire was responsible for creating the electronic realisation of a score by Ron Grainer for the theme tune of Doctor Who. The theme was the first to be created and produced entirely electronically and is one of the most famous and recognisable TV themes ever. Grainer attempted to get Derbyshire a co-composer credit but the BBC refused. Derbyshire’s arrangement of the theme was used for seventeen seasons, running from 1963 – 1980. It has since been reworked. Derbyshire was also responsible for some of the incidental music used in the show. From 1964 – 1965 she collaborated with British artist and playwright Barry Bermange for the BBC’s Third Programme to produce four Inventions for Radio, a collage of people describing their dreams, set to a background of electronic sound.
In 1966, Derbyshire, Brian Hodgson and Peter Zinovieff set up Unit Delta Plus in order to create and promote electronic music. Derbyshire had been told her music was “too lascivious for 11 year olds” and “too sophisticated for the BBC2 audience” and Unit Delta Plus was a way in which she could create and experiment with electronic music without any constraints. The group exhibited their music at experimental and electronic music festivals, including the 1966 The Million Volt Light and Sound Rave at which The Beatles’ “Carnival of Light” had its only public playing. A year later, the unit disbanded. Derbyshire and Hodgson then set up the Kaleidophon studio in Camden Town with David Vorhaus. The studio produced electronic music for London theatres and produced an album under the name White Noise. The album is now considered influential in the development of electronic music. The trio also contributed to the Standard Music Library, with Derbyshire producing compositions under the name “Li De la Russe.”
In 1973, Derbyshire left the BBC to work at Hodgson’s Electrophon studio, where she created the soundtrack to the film The Legend of Hell House. Her work from the 1960’s and 70’s is still used in radio and TV today and credited and covered by bands like Sonic Boom, Apex Twin and The Chemical Brothers. Derbyshire stopped producing music at this point, and worked as a radio operator for the laying of a British Gas pipeline, in an art gallery and in a bookshop. In the late 90’s, she returned to music and in 2000 and 2001 she served as adviser and co-producer of Sonic Boom’s EAR LPs Vibrations and Continuum.
Derbyshire died in 2001 at the age of 64. After her death,267 reel-to-reel tapes and thousands of pairs were found in her attic and given on permanent loan to the University of Manchester. In 2010, the University added to their collection with Derbyshire’s childhood collection of papers, it can be viewed at the John Rylands Library. Derbyshire has been referred to as ‘the unsung heroine of British electronic music’, and influenced a wide range of people. There is no complete list of her works, but her work with the BBC has been released on numerous Radiophonic Workshop and Doctor Who LPs and CDs. The story of her life and pioneering musical work was been told in a BBC Radio 4 play entitled Blue Veils and Golden Sands in 2002 and a docudrama for the BBC celebrating the early days of Doctor Who for its fiftieth anniversary in 2013.