Written by Frederick Bradnum
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 128 Kbps


The BBC's first 'Radiophonic Poem'.

BBC Blurb
This programme is an experiment. An exploration. It's been put
together with enormous enthusiasm and equipment designed
for other purposes. The basis of it is an unlimited supply of magnetic
tape, recording machine, razor blade, and some thing to stick the bits
together with. And a group of technicians who think that nothing is too
much trouble - provided that it works.

You take a sound. Any sound. Record it and then change its nature
by a multiplicity of operations. Record it at different speeds. Play it
backwards. Add it to itself over and over again. You adjust filters,
echos, acoustic qualities. You combine segments of magnetic tape.

By these means and many others you can create sounds which no
one has ever heard before. Sounds which have indefinable and
unique qualities of their own.

A vast and subtle symphony can be composed from the noise of a
pin dropping. In fact one of the most vibrant and elemental sounding
noises in tonight's programme started life as an extremely tinny cowbell.

It's a sort of modern magic. Many of you may be familiar with it. They've
been exploiting it on the continent for years. But strangely enough we've
held aloof. Partly from distrust. Is it simply a new toy? Partly through
complacency. Ignorance too.

We're saying at last that we think there's some thing in it. But we aren't
calling it musique concrète. In fact we've decided not to use the
word music at all. Some musicians believe that it can become an art
form itself. Others are sceptical. That's not our immediate concern.
We're interested in its application to radio writing - dramatic or poetic -
adding a new dimension. A form that is essentially radio.

Properly used, radiophonic effects have no relationship with any
existing sound. They're free of irrelevant associations. They have an
emotional life of their own. And they could be a new and invaluable
strand in the texture of radio and theatre and cinema and television.
Endquote

It's interesting hearing this with hindsight. Comparing it with what we
know happened. How the Radiophonic Workshop built on this work
and added texture to so much of the BBC's output over the next 45 years.

In effect, it was a manifesto.
.