Daphne Oram: innovator, writer and composer

Abstract

The main focus of this article is the work of Daphne Oram, composer of electronic music, who founded the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1958 and went on to run her own independent studio from where she composed several significant pieces of electronic music, designed and built a new audio recording machine, and lectured and wrote extensively on electronic and concrète music. The paper will endeavour to show that Ms Oram is deserving of recognition as an innovative composer of electronic and concrète music, as well as possessing interesting and valuable insight into the practice and theory of this medium. It will critically examine her work, and methods for achieving completed pieces, and compare and contrast her compositional work and the thinking behind it, to the work of other significant composers of the time.