The BBC Radiophonic workshop, a brief history

About a decade before Wendy Carlos decided to reissue some of Bach's music on a new piece of technology, an analogue synthesizer, Desmond Briscoe was appointed the Senior Studio Manager with Dick Mills employed as a technical assistant to a new department for writing Theme music. Much of The Radiophonic Workshop's early work was in effects for radio, in particular experimental drama and "radiophonic poems".
American composer Henry Cowell, in referring to the projects of Nikolai Loptatnikoff, believed that "there was a wide field open for the composition of music for phonographic discs."

Around the 1940's onwards the French had been experimenting with recording sounds and manipulating them for artistic purposes. The French composer and theoretician Pierre Schaeffer, began his exploration of radiophony when he joined Jacques Copeau and his pupils in the foundation of the Studio d'Essai de la Radiodiffusion Nationale. The studio originally functioned as a center for the Resistance movement in French radio, which in August 1944 was responsible for the first broadcasts in liberated Paris. It was here that Schaeffer began to experiment with creative radiophonic techniques using the sound technologies of the time.

Musique concrète, meaning "concrete music") is a form of electroacoustic music that is made in part from acousmatic sound. In addition to sounds derived from musical instruments or voices, it may use other sources of sound such as electronic synthesizers or sounds recorded from nature. Also, the structure of the compositions is not restricted to the normal musical rules of melody, harmony, rhythm, metre and so on. The theoretical basis of the style was developed by Pierre Schaeffer.

At around the same time as Schaeffer was conducting his preliminary experiments into sound manipulation. The Egyptian composer Halim El-Dabh, then an a student in Cairo, was independently experimenting with tape music. Musique concrète was not a study of timbre, it is focused on envelopes forms, as a rule was presented by means of non-traditional characteristics.

        The BBC Workshop was set up to satisfy the growing demand in the late 1950s for "radiophonic" sounds from a group of producers and studio managers at the BBC, including Desmond Briscoe and Daphne Oram. For some time there had been much interest in producing innovative music and sounds to go with the pioneering programming of the era, in particular the dramatic output of the BBC Third Programme. Often the sounds required for the atmosphere that programme makers wished to create were unavailable or non-existent through traditional sources and so some, such as the musically trained Oram, would look to new techniques to produce effects and music for their pieces.

Much of this interest drew them to musique concrète and tape manipulation techniques, since using these methods could allow them to create soundscapes suitable for the growing range of unconventional programming. Their significant early output included creating effects for the popular science-fiction serial Quatermass and the Pit and memorable comedy sounds for The Goon Show. When the BBC noticed the rising popularity of this method they established a Radiophonic Effects Committee, setting up the Workshop in rooms 13 and 14 of the BBC's Maida Vale studios with a budget of £2,000. The Workshop regularly released technical journals of their findings - leading to some of their techniques being borrowed by sixties producers and engineers.

From the early sixties the Workshop began creating television theme tunes and jingles, particularly for low budget schools programmes. The shift from the experimental nature of the late 50s dramas to theme tunes was noticeable enough for one radio presenter to have to remind listeners that the purpose of the Workshop was not pop music. In fact, in 1962 one of Fagandini's interval signals "Time Beat" was reworked with assistance from George Martin (in his pre-Beatles days) and commercially released as a single using the pseudonym Ray Cathode. During this early period the innovative electronic approaches to music in the Workshop began to attract some significant young talent including Delia Derbyshire, Brian Hodgson and John Baker, who was in fact a jazz pianist with an interest in reverse tape effects. Later, in 1967. they were joined by David Cain, a jazz bass player and mathematician.
In 1963 they were approached by composer Ron Grainer to record a theme tune for the upcoming BBC television series Doctor Who. Presented with the task of "realising" Grainer's score, complete with its descriptions of "sweeps", "swoops", "wind clouds" and "wind bubbles", Delia Derbyshire created a piece of musique concrète which has become one of television's most recognisable themes. Over the next quarter-century the Workshop contributed greatly to the programme providing its vast range of unusual sound-effects, from the TARDIS dematerialisation to the Sonic screwdriver, as well as much of the programme's distinctive electronic incidental music, including every score from 1980 to 1985.

As the sixties drew to a close many of the techniques used by the Workshop changed as more electronic music began to be produced by synthesisers. Many of the old members of the Workshop were reluctant to use the new instruments, often because of the limitations and unreliable nature of many of the early synthesisers but also, for some, because of a dislike of the sounds they created.
This led to many leaving the workshop making way for a new generation of musicians in the early 1970s including Malcolm Clarke, Paddy Kingsland, Roger Limb and Peter Howell. From the early days of a studio full of tape reels and electronic oscillators, the Workshop now found itself in possession of various synthesisers including the EMS VCS 3 and the EMS Synthi 100 nicknamed the "Delaware" by the members of the Workshop.
In 1977, Workshop co-founder Desmond Briscoe retired from organisational duties with Brian Hodgson, returning after a five-year gap away from the Workshop, taking over. By this point the output of the Workshop was vast with high demand for complete scores for programmes as well as the themes and sound effects for which it had made its name. By the end of the decade the workshop was contributing to over 300 programmes a year from all departments of the BBC and had long since expanded from its early two room setup. Its contributions included material for programmes such as The Body in Question, Blue Peter and Tomorrow's World as well as sound effects for popular science fiction programmes Blake's 7 and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (in both its radio and television forms) by Richard Yeoman-Clark and Paddy Kingsland respectively.
By the early 1990s, BBC director John Birt decided that departments were to charge each other and bid against each other for services and to cut those which couldn't make enough revenue to cover their costs. In 1991 the Workshop was given five years in which to break even but the cost of keeping the department, which required a number of engineers as well as composers, proved too much.
In May 2009, Dick Mills reunited with former BBC Radiophonic Workshop composers Roger Limb, Paddy Kingsland and Peter Howell with archivist Mark Ayres for a live concert at The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm, London, performing as "The Radiophonic Workshop".

The BBC announced in September 2012 that the Workshop would be revived as an online venture, with seven new composers and musicians. The new Workshop will be based online at The Space, a joint venture between the BBC and Arts Council England. Composer Matthew Herbert has been appointed the new Creative Director, and he will work alongside Micachu, Yann Seznec, Max de Wardener, Patrick Bergel, theatre director Lyndsey Turner and broadcast technologist Tony Churnside. None of the original Workshop members have been announced to be involved in the revival.

The Radiophonic Workshop regularly released free journals of its experiments to the public, complete with instructions and wiring diagrams. Amongst those who studied the journals and learned from their techniques was sound engineer Roger Mayer, who supplied guitar pedals to Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix. In 1997 the electronic dance music magazine Mixmag described the Workshop as, "the unsung heroes of British electronica."