Death of a Jelly Baby

From WikiDelia
Jump to navigationJump to search

Working with her friend Angela Rodaway, Delia

composed a soundscape to accompany Angela's radio play Death of the Jelly Baby, using an EEG print-out of Angela's heartbeat and brainwaves.[1]

What Delia calls Angela's Ballet and the BBC calls Gravel appear to be the same piece of music:

  • both are mentioned in connection with EEGs
  • Delia's notes "R.W - 26.7.63"[3] list Gravel as one of her immediate tasks and both were performed/broadcast in 1964.[2]

The Radiophonic Database says that Death of the Jelly Baby was broadcast[3] but Gravel never was.[4]

Title

The piece gets called variously:

  • Death of a Jelly Baby
    • International Electronic Music Catalog[5]
  • Death of the Jelly Baby
    • The Guardian's obituary for Angela Rodaway[1]
  • The Death of a Jelly Baby
  • The Death of the Jelly Baby
    • Radio Times, 11 June 1964.

Availability

  • Broadcast on the Third Programme on 29th May 1964 at 8.45pm[3] and repeated on the 14th June 1964.[6]
  • Gravel was performed at the 1964 Congress for Experimental Music in Berlin.[2]
  • In the BBC Sound Archive on tape TRW 4090.[3]
  • A copy of it for Germany, TRW 6193, is missing.[7]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 The Guardian's obituary for Angela Rodaway, 15th November 2012.
  2. 2.0 2.1 James Percival writes in an email to mailing list delia@topica.com that Gravel "was apparently played at the 1964 Congress for Experimental Music in Berlin", and there is a tape TRW 6193 labelled The Death of a Jelly Baby (for Germany), also dated 1964.
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 The Tape Library List's entry for TRW 4090: "The Death of a Jelly Baby: 2 reels - final masters".
  4. The Tape Library List's entry for TRW 6064: "Gravel".
  5. International Electronic Music Catalog, p.164
  6. The Radio Times dated 11th June 1964 covering June 13-19 has The Death of the Jelly Baby (Sunday, Third) Another hearing of the work for radio by Angela Rodaway."
  7. The Tape Library List's entry for TRW 6193: "The Death of a Jelly Baby (for Germany), copy of TRW 4090" (missing).