Delia Derbyshire's eightieth birthday special

Delia Derbyshire's eightieth birthday special was a BBC Radio 6 programme presented by Stuart Maconie. It contains new material from the Cavanagh interview with Delia and a chapter or two from each of the Inventions for Radio.

As usual, Maconie can't get his facts straight and invents or exaggerates others:

• "Delia was an assistant at the Radiophonic Workshop from 1961 to 1973." erm, that's April 1962.
• Of Amor Dei "It was a huge influence on the famous electro-acoustic piece Mortuos Plango Vivos Voco (actually Voco) by the British composer Jonathan Harvey who Delia was at university with." In reality:

“a piece of Jonathan's called "Symphony" (1966) was partly inspired by Delia's "Amor Dei", and "Symphony" did go on to inform some of his later work, though not Mortuos Plango, which is completely different. Jonathan [said] he liked the breathing quality of the repeated chords.”

Tracklist

• 00:00 Ziwzih Ziwzih OO-OO-OO
• 01:30 An epoch radio presenter: "The BBC Radiophonc Workshop was set up in 1958 to provide a service for radio and television, to provide special sounds ranging from science fiction to fantasy on the third programme. When sounds are shaped and organised into patterns, the result tends to be musical and if you use tape machines and electronic apparatus and the sounds are of electronic origin, they're almost[?] producing electronic music."
• 01:58 Science and Health
• 02:26 Cavanagh interview:
  • "Delia, what is a radiophonic sound?"
  • "Do you have a set number of basic sounds that you use?"
  • "And, how do you put all these together?"
• 04:21 Door To Door
• 04:42 Maconie speaking
• 06:01 The Dreams: Running
• 13:51 Cavanagh interview: "Oh, the radio, the radio, the radio. The radio was the most important thing in my life" ... "clogs"
• 14:48 Delia's Resolve from ESL104
• 14:52 Cavanagh interview: "I remember our physics teacher..:"
• 15:55 The Dreams: Falling
• 21:27 BBC adverts (!)
• 22:14 Maconie
• 22:29 Cavanagh interview: "I was quite a clever girl.." oxford & cambridge
• 22:54 Way Out excerpt
• 25:06 Delia speaking in the Tomorrow's World video
• 26:46 Maconie introduces Amor Dei "It was a huge influence on the famous electro-acoustic piece Mortuos Plango Vivos Voca(actually Voco) by the British composer Jonathan Harvey who Delia was at university with."
• 27:25 The Dreams: Falling
• 40:00 More BBC adverts
• 42:14 Cavanagh interview, Delia on lasciviousness and feminism
• 43:25 Way Out fades into The Evenings of Certain Lives: Looks
• 48:20 Cavanagh interview: after Delia left the BBC and worked as a radio operator
• 49:45 The After Life: "Light! Everything is light"