Time On Our Hands
Time On Our Hands is Delia's theme music, created in 1962, for a 70-minute BBC television documentary of the same name "on the problems of increased leisure in the automated world of the future. Pure electronic sound."[1]
One of her earliest contributions - "Time On Our Hands" - is a superb subversion of a phrase which would normally evoke (especially in the context of 1962) new-found affluence, spare time and leisure, now rendered alienated, distant and isolated.[2]
The programme was produced by Don Haworth and directed by Pieter Morpurgo[3] and is described as a
Documentary made in 1963, which projected the viewer 25 years into the future to 14th Sept. 1988, to look back over the events of the past 25 years. With Kingsley Amis, Stafford Beer, Aldous Huxley, Franklin Medhurst and Raymond Williams.[3]
I had only done one other television programme before [Doctor Who], called Time On Our Hands, using beautiful abstract electronic sounds. So I was very inexperienced, but making something from nothing was my secret.[4]
In 2008, a second piece made by Delia for the programme was published on The BBC Radiophonic Workshop - A Retrospective, entitled City Music, presumably her incidental music for scenes inside the programme.
Papers
- DD162136: Delia's handwritten plan for the music to the programme
- DD162151: Notes
- DD162212: Diagram
- DD162222: Diagram
- DD162239: "Tape one / Tape 2 / Tape 3"
- DD162259: Diagram
- DD162324: Chords and tunings
- DD162347: Notes "Tape 4, Lookings up"
- DD162408: Timing diagrams and descriptive text
- DD162447: Chord sequence for "H continuo tape 1 (loop)"
- DD162502: Tape lengths and timing diagram
Availability
- First broadcast on 19th March 1963.[5]
- Published as track 12 of the album BBC Radiophonic Workshop - 21.
- A longer track, 2:02 long, entitled Time On Our Hands (Titles And City Music), is included on The BBC Radiophonic Workshop - A Retrospective, which consists of the theme minus the last note of the fade-out, present on BBC Radiophonic Workshop - 21, spliced with City Music as if they were a single piece.
- In BBC Sound Archive on tape TRW 4060: Time On Our Hands[6]
- In the BBC Sound Archive on TRW 4: "Examples of work 1961-1964".[7]
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References
- ↑ The Tape Library List.
- ↑ Robin Carmody in Wee also have sound-houses
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 The British Film Institute's Film & TV Database's entry for Time On Our Hands
- ↑ The Soundhouse interview
- ↑ The British Film institute's Film & TV Database's entry for Time On Our Hands - transmission dates
- ↑ The Tape Library List catalogue entry for TRW 4060.
- ↑ The Tape Library List catalogue entry for TRW 4.
