Delia Derbyshire

Delia Derbyshire

Birth : 1937-05-05, Coventry, West Midlands, England, UK

Death : 2001-07-03

History

Delia Ann Derbyshire was an English musician and composer of electronic music. She carried out pioneering work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop during the 1960s, including her electronic arrangement of the theme music to the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who.

Profile

Delia Derbyshire

Movies

Sisters with Transistors
Self (archive footage)
Think of early electronic music and you’ll likely see men pushing buttons, knobs, and boundaries. While electronic music is often perceived as a boys' club, the truth is that from the very beginning women have been integral in inventing the devices, techniques and tropes that would define the shape of sound for years to come.
Delia Derbyshire: The Myths And Legendary Tapes
Self
A true pioneer in audio exploration and psycho-acoustics, Delia Derbyshire conceived one of the most familiar compositions in science fiction, the Doctor Who theme, while working in a BBC basement. Her soundscapes felt like they connected to another realm. Kicking off with the discovery of 267 tapes in an attic, along with a treasure trove of journals hidden in her childhood bedroom, this film tunes in to Derbyshire’s frequency; that of a life-long non-conformist, whose peals of laughter in an archive interview tickle with delight and eccentricity. Featuring a rich archive, interviews, fictional embodiment and Cosey Fanni Tutti’s psycho-sonic channelling, director Caroline Catz traces acoustic pathways on her archeological dig into Derbyshire’s resonant life.
Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and Legendary Tapes
Music
A short experimental biography of the pioneering electronic music composer Delia Derbyshire.
The Delian Mode
Self (archive footage)
A Genie Award winning documentary about electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire, primarily remembered for the original realization of Ron Grainer's theme for Doctor Who and her work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
Masters of Sound
Self (archive footage)
Documentary on the sound effects of Doctor Who in the 1960s.
The Alchemists of Sound
A documentary about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, responsible for creating some of the most memorable television and radio music in British popular culture, including "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and Doctor Who (1963).
Doctor Who
Original Music Composer
The Seventh Doctor becomes the Eighth. And on the streets of San Francisco – alongside new ally Grace Holloway - he battles the Master.
Doctor Who: The Five Doctors
Music Arranger
Many incarnations of the Doctors and their old companions are taken out of time and deposited in the Death Zone on Gallifrey. There, they must battle the Master, Daleks, Cybermen and Yeti in order to reach the Dark Tower and discover the Tomb of Rassilon.
About Bridges
Music
“It all begins with how you feel on a bridge… You see how other people are busy and how you experience it yourself and so it becomes something about people.” The artist Marian Plug speaks to filmmakers Stansfield/Hooykaas while composing her large and intricate silkscreen “The Bridge.” After filming the many different types of bridges around Amsterdam, they interview workers who clean, paint and repair the bridges. Anchored by a buoyant electronic soundtrack by British composer Delia Derbyshire (known for her groundbreaking work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop), the filmmakers brought Derbyshire to Amsterdam for the shoot, so that they might create ideas together and so that she could experience the rhythms of the city. The film explores different ideas of work, connection and positioning: a bridge means something different to a builder, an architect or someone walking over it.
The Legend of Hell House
Original Music Composer
A team consisting of a physicist, his wife, a young female psychic and the only survivor of the previous visit are sent to the notorious Hell House to prove/disprove survival after death. Previous visitors have either been killed or gone mad, and it is up to the team to survive a full week in isolation, and solve the mystery of the Hell House.
Circle of Light
Music
This film without words is composed of Pamela Bone's unique photograhic transparencies. Her talent has been said to 'push photography beyond its own limits, liberating it to the status of an entirely creative art form.' Inspired by nature, and being more responsive to feeling than to thought, Miss Bone has sought to express the mystery and beauty of the inner vision through photographic means alone: landscape has the quality of a dream; children on the sea-shore have a sense of their own enchantment, trees are forboding and strange when night moves in their arms. It took Miss Bone twenty years to find the right technique and so overcome the limitations that photography would impose.
O Fat White Woman
Music
The wife of a public school head becomes gradually aware that her husband has been physically abusing his pupils. Written by the master of late-middle-age morality plays, William Trevor.
Doctor Who: Inferno
Music Score Producer
UNIT is providing security cover at an experimental drilling project at Eastchester, designed to penetrate the Earth's crust and release a previously untapped source of energy. Soon, however, the drill head starts to leak an oily green liquid that transforms those who touch it into vicious primeval creatures with a craving for heat. The Doctor is accidentally transported "sideways in time" by the partially repaired TARDIS control console into a parallel universe where the drilling project is at a more advanced stage. Thwarted by his friends' ruthless alter egos, he works to save both universes.