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Daphne Blake Oram (31 December 1925 – 5 January 2003) was a British composer and
electronic music
Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroa ...
ian. She was one of the first British composers to produce electronic sound, and was an early practitioner of
musique concrète in the UK.
As a co-founder of the
BBC Radiophonic Workshop
The BBC Radiophonic Workshop was one of the sound effects units of the BBC, created in 1958 to produce incidental sounds and new music for radio and, later, television. The unit is known for its experimental and pioneering work in electroni ...
, she was central to the development of British electronic music. Her uncredited scoring work on the 1961 film ''
The Innocents'' helped to pioneer the electronic soundtrack.
Oram was the creator of the
Oramics
__NOTOC__
Oramics is a drawn sound technique designed in 1957 by musician Daphne Oram. The machine was further developed in 1962 after receiving a grant from the Gulbenkian Foundation. The technique involves drawing on 35mm film strips to c ...
technique for creating electronic sounds using
drawn sound. Besides being a musical innovator, she was the first woman to independently direct and set up a personal electronic music studio, and the first woman to design and construct an electronic musical instrument.
In her book ''An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics'' (1971) she explored philosophical themes related to the physics of sound.
Early life and education
Oram was born to James and Ida Oram on 31 December 1925 in Wiltshire, England. Educated at
Sherborne School for Girls
Sherborne Girls, formally known as Sherborne School for Girls, is an independent day and boarding school for girls, located in Sherborne, North Dorset, England. There were 485 pupils attending in 2019–2020, with over 90 per cent of them livin ...
, she was, from an early age, taught
piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...
and
organ as well as musical composition.
[
] Her father was the President of the Wiltshire Archeological Society in the 1950s. Her childhood home was within 10 miles of the stone circles of
Avebury
Avebury () is a Neolithic henge monument containing three stone circles, around the village of Avebury in Wiltshire, in southwest England. One of the best known prehistoric sites in Britain, it contains the largest megalithic stone circle in ...
and 20 miles from
Stonehenge.
Career
Work at the BBC
In 1942, Oram was offered a place at the
Royal College of Music
The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the undergraduate to the doctoral level in all aspects of Western Music including performanc ...
but instead took up a position as a Junior Studio Engineer and "music balancer" at the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
.
One of her job responsibilities was "shadowing" live concerts with a pre-recorded version so the broadcast would go on if interrupted by "enemy action". Other job duties included creating sound effects for radio shows and mixing broadcast levels. During this period she became aware of developments in synthetic sound and began experimenting with tape recorders. Often staying after hours, she was known to experiment with tape recorders late into the night. She recorded sounds on to tape, and then cut, spliced and looped, slowed them down, sped up, and played them backwards.
She also dedicated time in the 1940s composing music, including an orchestral work entitled ''Still Point''.
This was an innovative piece for turntables, "double orchestra" and five microphones. Many consider ''Still Point'' the first composition that combined acoustic orchestration with live electronic manipulation. Rejected by the BBC and never performed, ''Still Point'' remained unheard for 70 years, until on 24 June 2016
Shiva Feshareki and the
London Contemporary Orchestra performed it for the first time. Following the discovery of the finalised score, the premiere of the revised version of ''Still Point'' was performed at ''
The Proms
The BBC Proms or Proms, formally named the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts Presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hal ...
'' in London on 23 July 2018 by composers Shiva Feshareki and James Bulley - who realised the composition following Oram's notes - alongside the
London Contemporary Orchestra.
In the 1950s, she was promoted to become a music studio manager. Following a trip to the
RTF studios in Paris, she began to campaign for the BBC to provide electronic music facilities for composing sounds and music, using
electronic music
Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroa ...
and
musique concrète techniques, for use in its programming.
In 1957 she was commissioned to compose music for the play ''
Amphitryon 38
''Amphitryon 38'' is a play written in 1929 by the French dramatist Jean Giraudoux, the number in the title being Giraudoux's whimsical approximation of how many times the story had been told on stage previously.
Original productions
''Amphitryon ...
.'' She created this piece using a
sine wave oscillator, a tape recorder and some self-designed filters, thereby producing the first wholly electronic score in BBC history.
Along with fellow electronic musician and BBC colleague
Desmond Briscoe, she began to receive commissions for many other works, including a significant production of
Samuel Beckett's ''
All That Fall'' (1957). As demand grew for these electronic sounds, the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
gave Oram and Briscoe a budget to establish the