Daphne Oram (1925 – 2003)
Daphne Oram was one of the early pioneers of electronic music. She was born in Wiltshire, England, and learned piano, organ, and composition at an early age. She could have attended The Royal College of Music but decided against it in favor of a job as a junior sound engineer at the BBC. She was 17 years old.
Daphne Oram’s first few years at the BBC were during World War II, so one of her jobs was to “shadow” live music broadcasts by syncing phonograph records in case of a bombing raid; if the live performance had to be halted, the phonograph records in the studio would take over. She was also responsible for creating sound effects for the BBC, sometimes in connection with broadcast plays, and she soon began experimenting with the tape equipment, staying after hours to work on her own techniques.
In 1959, Daphne Oram left the BBC to set up her own studio. At the Oramics Studio for Electronic Composition, she developed a technology she called Oramics that created music from graphical patterns drawn on 35mm film stock. (Footage of Oramics in action can be seen in the 2020 documentary Sisters with Transistors.) Some of Daphne Oram’s sounds were included in the 1961 horror film The Innocents but she was not credited.
Bird of Parallax is a 1972 composition written for a ballet performance that combines sounds from the Oramics Machine with traditional tape montage.