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The WikiDelia

The WikiDelia is my second study of the life and work of the pioneer of electronic music Delia Derbyshire.

“I am staggered by the amount of information and detail in the wiki.”

If you don't know Delia's music already, you should first look at delia-derbyshire.org and my first study, Delia Derbyshire's Audiological Chronology. If you just want the music, try Audio.

This WikiDelia extends the Chronology by having a page for each piece, album, person with whom she worked, event she participated in and so on, as well as one for each of the 250+ tapes and 1000+ papers found in her attic after she died.

To make them easier to find, each page is in one or more "Categories", of which the main ones are listed on the left.

It's far from complete but some highlights are:

• The Pattern Emerges with log-frequency-axis spectrograms, score and analysis of the instruments
• the Chronology, listing anything with a date associated with it
• TRW: Hundreds of Delia's unpublished works rotting on tape in the BBC Sound Archive and
• a Petition for the BBC to publish them.

I have recovered Delia's audio for

• A Game of Chess, dance music for children
• About Bridges, two themes for an art film
• Anger of Achilles, a long dramatic play with some enchanting musical effects
• the Aztec suite, atmospheric soundscapes for a programme about the Spanish destruction of the Aztec and Mayan civilizations
• Circle of Light, a 30-minute soundscape for an art film
• Closed Planet, a sci-fi radio drama from 1962
• Hamlet, the appearance and voice of the ghost of Hamlet's father (1969 film version)
• London Lemons (9 themes)
• Music of the Spheres, music accompanying a scene of computer graphics in The Ascent of Man (different from Music of Spheres)
• O Fat White Woman
• Oranges and Lemons
• Petya's Dream from War and Peace
• Play for Today - Title Music
• Pompeii, sounds for a Chronicle about Pompeiian civilization and the eruption that destroyed it
• Radio Solent, a 4-second jingle for a local radio station
• Shadow of the Pharoah, soundscapes based on the sound of Tutankhamun's Trumpet
• The Bagman, a radio play about a playwright's dream, a witch and a bag full of tiny people
• Ways of Seeing, music for the psychology of the "three dreams" used by many advertising campaigns

There are fragments of the audio for

• I Think in Shapes
• The Evenings of Certain Lives
• The Naked Sun
• The Cyprian Queen

and there are reconstructions from Delia's score fragments for

• Anything Goes
• Ape and Essence
• Clothes
• Le Pont Mirabeau, a romantic poem by Apollinaire, set to music
• Music to Undress to
• Philips
• Science All Around - Sound

If you spot any errors, would like to help with it or have other questions, please contact delia.derbyshire.net@gmail.com

References

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