Daphne Oram

Not to be confused with Daphne Blake.

Daphne Oram
Background information
Birth nameDaphne Blake Oram[1]
Born(1925-12-31)31 December 1925
Devizes, Wiltshire, England
Died5 January 2003(2003-01-05) (aged 77)
Maidstone, Kent, England[2]
Genres
Occupation(s)Composer, electronic musician
InstrumentSynthesiser

Daphne Blake Oram (31 December 1925 – 5 January 2003) was a British composer and electronic musician. She was one of the first British composers to produce electronic sound, and was an early practitioner of musique concrète in the UK.[3] As a co-founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, she was central to the development of British electronic music.[4] Her uncredited scoring work on the 1961 film The Innocents helped to pioneer the electronic soundtrack.[1]

Oram was the creator of the Oramics technique for graphical sound. She was the first woman to independently direct and set up a personal electronic music studio, and the first woman to design and construct an electronic musical instrument.[3] In her book An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics (1971) she explored philosophical themes related to acoustics and electronic composition.

  1. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Guardian Obit was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Indi was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b Worby, Robert (1 August 2008). "Daphne Oram: Portrait of an electronic music pioneer". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 11 December 2016.
  4. ^ "A Relic From The Roots of Electronic Music". NPR.org. Retrieved 11 December 2016.