1960 – Interval Signal

Beyond that sleeve note from 1978 not much else is known about this piece. The tape archive doesn’t have an entry which matches this and it may have been kept only on a compilation tape. However, Louis Neibur goes into some depth in Special Sound, transcribing and analysing the structure of the piece. He draws comparisons to later works by La Monte Young and 1960 minimalists.

The general feel is that of a clockwork mechanism cycling through phases and Maddalena must have had the BBC TV clock firmly in her mind when composing this. With the creation of the Presentation department under Rex Moorfoot¹ in 1960 there was a new purpose and drive behind the bits between teh programmes. There was a move away from in-vision presenters, and filler films like The Potter’s Wheel for a start. Partly this was in reaction to ITV’s slicker presentation.

What we did of course was to take them out of vision and have them speak behind a variety of visuals.
My thinking was that just as the anonymous voice in a documentary
isn’t challenged when it quotes facts, it can be an authority across
a wide range of subjects and be credible, so I found, or I thought and
I think I was proved right, that announcers out of vision could say
anything and not have their credibility or authority questioned at all.
And I think it’s worked very well.

Rex Moorfoot – The Oral History of the BBC.