Genres Electronic music Role Musician Name Maddalena Fagandini | Years active 1953 - 1987 Instruments Musique concrete | |
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Birth name Madeleine Margaret Anne Fagandini Occupation(s) Composer, electronic musician, television producer Associated acts BBC Radiophonic Workshop Died November 29, 2012, New Malden, United Kingdom Music group BBC Radiophonic Workshop (1959 – 1966) Similar People Brian Hodgson, Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire, Paddy Kingsland, Elizabeth Parker | ||
Ideal home exhibition maddalena fagandini
Maddalena Fagandini (30 August 1929 – 29 November 2012) was an electronic musician and television producer. She was employed by the BBC in the early 1950s as part of their Italian Service before becoming part of the pioneering BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1959. Her work with the Radiophonic Workshop involved creating jingles and interval signals, using musique concrète techniques, for BBC radio and television. In 1962 one of her interval signals was re-worked by future Beatles producer George Martin and released, under the pseudonym "Ray Cathode", as "Time Beat".
She left the Workshop in 1966, following the introduction of synthesisers, to become a television producer and director, working particularly in the field of language teaching. The first such series, Parliamo Italiano in 1963, was very successful. It was followed by further series, often combining both radio and television programmes, teaching Italian (Conversazioni in 1977 and Buongiorno Italia in 1982/3), Spanish (Dígame in 1978) and German (Kontakte in 1971 and Deutsch Direkt in 1985). Maddalena also produced two television series of The Devil's Music, a historical exploration of black American Blues music, in 1976 and 1979, and one television series of Mediterranean Cookery in 1987. She was also the film director for the BBC Schools Look and Read story The Boy from Space in 1971 (re-shown in 1980 in colour).