Pioneers of Sound

Home , BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Delia Derbyshire, John Cage

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with audio. It owed its existence not to the rary

B BBC music department, which baulked at Li electronics, but to the drama and features OTO departments, which supported the creation

BBC Ph BBC of a team to expand the sonic palette of their productions. The name radiophonic was chosen over another term, electrophonic, which was deemed to be too closely associated with brain research. Born in Los Angeles in 1912, John Cage learned to tinker from his father, a serial inventor of everything from submarines to an ‘Invisible Ray Vision System’. From an early age, Cage was a good orator and had a media- genic quality. Once he left home, his life took on a Zelig-like fluidity: boarding with art col- lector Peggy Guggenheim, befriending author John Steinbeck and studying with composer Arnold Schoenberg. In his later life, Silver- man writes, Cage was so celebrated that the festivities probably contributed to his death. His birthday milestones involved exhausting global galas that curtailed his composing. Written for ensembles large and small, many of Cage’s compositions invoked chance and interactivity. He championed percussion as an instrument in Western music and devel- oped the ‘happening’ (the event as art) and the ‘prepared piano’ (in which objects rattle on its strings). Today, Cage is best known for Delia Derbyshire, among other electronic-music pioneers, started out in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. the silent piece less than five minutes long that contains no notes: 4’33” was first played MuSiC in 1952 and was inspired by his experience in an anechoic chamber. His technological experimentation was advanced for its time — Cage’s early 1950s tape-splicing techniques, Pioneers of sound for example, did not reach their full potential until hip-hop samplers adopted them in the Two books chart the laboratory origins of avant-garde late 1970s and 1980s. electronic music, finds Marc Weidenbaum. Many scientists were among Cage’s close associates. Johan Wilhelm ‘Billy’ Klüver, a Bell Laboratories physicist, worked with fter decades of sonic experimenta- Special Sound: The Creation and Legacy of him to invent a photoelectric system that tion, two maverick institutions met the BBC Radiophonic Workshop allowed dancers to trigger sounds. Bell their ends within years of each other. LOUiS nieBUr Labs employee Max Mathews — later of Oxford University Press: 2010. 272 pp. AIn 1992, US composer John Cage, a prolific Stanford University, and after whom the $27.95, £17.99 pioneer of electronic music, passed away four widely used electronic music software weeks shy of turning 80. And in 1998, the BBC Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage Max/MSP was affectionately named — built Radiophonic Workshop closed down after KenneTh SiLverman Cage a 50-channel mixing board for Leonard Knopf: 2010. 496 pp. $40, £27.95 40 years of developing high-tech sounds. Two Bernstein’s performance of his Atlas Eclipti- books — Kenneth Silverman’s biography of calis. And Lejaren Hiller, a former DuPont Cage, Begin Again, and Louis Niebur’s account experiments to the public in pamphlets that chemist, helped Cage to become computer of the Radiophonic Workshop, Special Sound included instructions and wiring diagrams. literate in 1967, allowing him to accomplish — describe the technical innovations of these Eventually, electronics became so affordable long-envisioned projects that he had previ- institutions and suggest that they were victims that freelance composers undercut BBC ously deemed too complex to achieve. of their own notoriety. economics. Alien noises, manipulated Begin Again — the title of which reflects Created in 1958, the BBC Radiophonic recordings and synthesized instrumenta- the continual refreshment of Cage’s ideas Workshop produced electronic sounds for tion were replicated throughout pop culture, through his conversations with these many radio and television franchises, including diminishing the workshop’s individuality. players — is more descriptive than critical. landmark science-fiction series such as The Radiophonic studio had a lab-coat Silverman argues for the intensity of thought Quatermass, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the reputation from the start. The small team and emotion captured Galaxy and, most enduringly, the signa- innovated instinctively, adopting new tech- Nature.com in Cage’s body of ture tune for Doctor Who. Founded with nologies such as voltage-controlled wave- An interview with Tod work. Known for his advanced electronics equipment but a mod- form synthesis; adapting existing ones such Machover, the man philosophical mus- est budget, the studio’s edge was its ability to as the turntable; and developing new sounds behind Guitar Hero: ings on nature (he was tinker within its means. It released some of its and approaches to enlivening narratives go.nature.com/34hf6n an avid mycologist), as

296 | NATURE | VOL 469 | 20 JANUARy 2011 © 2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT well as on chance, technology and other EthiCS subjects, Cage became both a public intellectual and a celebrity. The BBC Radiophonic Workshop also regularly replenished its perspective — The good life by rotating its personnel. At first, this was a deliberate strategy by BBC managers. Pascal Boyer assesses what science has to say about morals. Electronic audio was so unfamiliar when the studio formed in 1958 that managers hilosopher David Hume wrote in the sources. Because there felt engineers could only work on sound eighteenth century that one cannot is a quantifiable out- effects “for a limited amount of time derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. In The come, we do not need a before succumbing to mental instabil- PMoral Landscape, journalist Sam Harris deity to know whether ity”. Niebur reveals the bureaucracy and counters this view, arguing that science can our choice had good political manoeuvrings inherent in the shed light on why we hold moral values and or bad consequences. government-funded behemoth that is also say which values are valid. In doing so, Harris points out that the BBC. Later, many studio hands left he eloquently counters the jaded pessimists most of the choices for better-paid jobs at private companies who think that science has little to say about that are spread in the — among them such seminal individuals happiness. His thesis is compelling, but he name of religion, such in the history of electronic music as Delia underplays the extent to which our decisions The Moral as proscribed killings, Derbyshire and Daphne Oram, the latter are rooted in intuition, preferring to portray Landscape: How stem from intuition of whom went on to influence film and decision-making as a calculated maximiza- Science Can and not from the doc- opera and develop new instruments. tion of our well-being. Determine Human trine followed. Moral Values There are parallels between the two The psychology of morality is a rapidly Sam harriS intuition and scientific books. The Radiophonic faithfully served growing field. Investigations of brain proc- The Free Press: 2010. findings are the main the BBC, and Cage composed reams of esses involved in moral intuitions, feelings 304 pp. $26.99 bases for making moral music for his lover Merce Cunningham’s and judgements reveal a suite of sophisticated decisions. dance company. Both institutions pio- mental capacities, fine-tuned by natural selec- But science and intuition are not always neered tape loops and other techniques, tion, that orchestrate our reactions to other reliable. The case against mugging people is and each associated closely with natu- people’s behaviours and to our own. In dis- easy to make, by quantifying suffering and ralists — Cage tributing resources, for example, people are benefit and the net result on the level of well- “Managers felt idolized philo- sensitive to differences in need and merit as being. But an issue such as abortion is more engineers could sopher Henry well as welfare. In most circumstances, people difficult: our feelings are grounded in our only work on David Thoreau, experience moral judgements as gut feelings, intuition about whether a fetus is a person. sound effects ‘for and the Radio- produced by largely unconscious processes. Our idea of personhood has evolved as an a limited amount phonic team Our moral reasoning is thus an awkward approximation that is sufficient in our social of time before wrote ardently attempt to rationalize these intuitive feelings. interactions. Such ideas typically founder succumbing for wildlife This nuanced scientific perspective is far on limiting cases — we simply cannot know to mental broadcaster from the hackneyed picture of virtue being whether a brain-dead individual or an unborn instability’.” David Atten- a culturally derived imprint, imposed for the fetus is a person or not. Harris sees such borough. Both benefit of society on an instinctive beast. It conundrums as difficult, unsolved scientific performed for a global audience, yet their shows how moral sentiment may have played puzzles that we should pursue. paths rarely crossed. a part in our evolution, conferring fitness A moral optimist, Harris suggests that Differences emerge in their philoso- advantages on ethically inclined individuals. people can be persuaded to abandon harm- phies. Cage was intellectually highbrow, But Harris goes further, arguing that humans ful behaviours, such as the stoning of adul- but the Radiophonic members were can intuitively distinguish ‘the good life’ — terers. Here, social scientists may feel that he chartered populists. Cage loomed large in which maximizes individual well-being — rides roughshod over some solid findings of European universities and cultural insti- from less-optimal alternatives. Moral courses moral psychology. Consequentialism is not tutions in Germany, France and Italy. The of action, he suggests, are those that lead us the heuristic of most humans. Experiments Radiophonic, although equally inventive, closer to this positive ideal. Scientific research show that assessments of well-being are of less defined itself by remaining opposed to addresses morality by explaining how our importance in moral decision-making than such academic forces. It avoided ideo- actions contribute to our well-being. a gut feeling that actions are wrong or right. logical battles about the political nature Harris runs against the intellectual grain For example, beyond its genetic risks, people of the orchestra or about musical struc- in stating that moral choices can be set on an maintain that sibling incest is wrong, even in tures such as 12-tone serialism, in which objective scale — those that increase well- cases where no children result. Cage participated. The Radiophonic was, being versus those that do not — and that To be persuaded that some actions are Niebur says, “the first studio in the world societies are capable of moral progress, such immoral because they diminish well-being, to make electronic music accessible to as outlawing slavery or torture. Both views people need to accept that welfare is the most ordinary people”. Its legacy lives on in oppose the prevailing position of moral rela- relevant criterion of morality, which may the latest return to our screens of Doctor tivism, which supposes that the suffering is require a special education. This and many Who — featuring yet another rendition justifiable if it fits some local custom. Harris other difficulties stand in the way of Harris’s of that indelible theme tune. ■ punctures such incoherent philosophy easily. moral reforms, but they are all reasons to read If morals are fluid, what should be our yard- his lucid, deep and uncompromising essay. ■ Marc Weidenbaum is a writer based in stick of valid choices? Religion is ruled out. San Francisco, California, and blogs at Harris’s brand of consequentialism — the ends Pascal Boyer is Henry Luce Professor http://disquiet.com. justify the means, so what is good is what max- of Individual and Collective Memory at e-mail: [email protected] imizes well-being — excludes transcendent Washington University, St Louis, USA.