Science and Industry was the first electronic signature tune for a BBC radio programme, making it a landmark worthy of special attention. I say tune but this is quite a challenging sequence of musical scenes from Phil Young. Although there’s no information on when it was first used in a broadcast it was entered into the BBC Recorded Programme Permanent Library with this ‘rec’ (recording) date.
The RWS tape archive number is 10671 which also puts it in this time frame. The Permanent Library 78 disc (24639) is titled ‘Incidental Sequences for Science and Industry’ and has been logged on Discogs2 so you can see that it includes two opening and two closing pieces plus 5 links with the final one lasting 2 minutes. This is, by far, the rarest disc of Radiophonic Music to have come into the public domain, although it hasn’t been made available to listen to.
This is the track listing on the RPPL disc’s label:
- Front
- 1-2. Opening-40″ each
- 3-4. Closing-30″ each
- 5. Link-46″
- Back
- 1. Link-47″
- 2. Link-41″
- 3. Link-32″
- 4. Link-2’00”
What you can hear though is a 31 (or 32-second?) piece on BBC Radiophonic Music – 21 and/or A Retrospective. Could that be track 3 on the back side? Or one of the closing tracks on the front side? The disc appears to be in the possession of the Erased Tapes record label so they might be willing to help with this speculation.
- Credited to Maddalena Fagandini, which may be a mistake or perhaps a collaboration. It’s labelled as ‘Titles (Opening Only)’ and for a P Redhouse from ‘External’, which I think refers to the World Service ↩︎
- https://www.discogs.com/release/19425706-Radiophonic-Workshop-Incidental-Sequences-for-Science-and-Industry ↩︎
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