Peter Howell (musician)
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Peter Howell (born 1949) is a musician and composer. He is best known for his work on ''
Doctor Who ''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series, created by Sydney Newman, C. E. Webber and Donald Wilson (writer and producer), Donald Wilson, depicts the adventures of an extraterre ...
'' as a member of the
BBC Radiophonic Workshop The BBC Radiophonic Workshop was one of the sound effects units of the BBC, created in 1958 to produce Incidental music, incidental sounds and new music for radio and, later, television. The unit is known for its experimental and pioneering ...
. Howell's musical career began in the late 1960s working with John Ferdinando in various
psychedelic folk Psychedelic folk (sometimes acid folk or freak folk) is a loosely defined form of psychedelic music that originated in the 1960s. It retains the largely acoustic instrumentation of contemporary folk music, folk, but adds musical elements common ...
bands including Agincourt and Ithaca. Howell and Ferdinando recorded five albums before Howell became a member of the Radiophonic Workshop, with which he would remain associated until 1997.


''Doctor Who''

His work on ''Doctor Who'' began in 1975 when he provided some accompanying incidental music for '' Revenge of the Cybermen'' and special sound for '' Planet of Evil''. When
John Nathan-Turner John Turner (12 August 1947 – 1 May 2002), known professionally as John Nathan-Turner, was an English television producer. He was the ninth producer of the long-running BBC science fiction series ''Doctor Who'' and the final producer of the ...
became producer of ''Doctor Who'' in 1980, he decided that the music needed to be updated and commissioned Howell to provide a new arrangement of the ''Doctor Who'' theme to accompany a new title sequence. Whereas the original arrangement of the theme (written by Ron Grainer) had been realised by Delia Derbyshire (and, originally, assisted by Dick Mills) using
musique concrète Musique concrète (; ): " problem for any translator of an academic work in French is that the language is relatively abstract and theoretical compared to English; one might even say that the mode of thinking itself tends to be more schematic ...
techniques, Howell arranged Grainer's theme on analogue synthesisers - primarily using a
Yamaha CS-80 The Yamaha CS-80 is an analog synthesizer introduced by Yamaha Corporation in 1977. It supports true 8-voice polyphony, with two independent synthesizer layers per voice each with its own set of front panel controls, in addition to a number of ha ...
, an
ARP Odyssey The ARP Odyssey is an analog circuit, analog synthesizer introduced by ARP Instruments in 1972. History ARP developed the Odyssey as a direct competitor to the Minimoog, Moog Minimoog and an answer to the demand for more affordable, portable, a ...
Mk3 and a
Roland Jupiter-4 The Roland Jupiter-4 (JP-4) was an analog synthesizer manufactured by the Roland Corporation between 1978 and 1981. It was notable as the company's first self-contained polyphony (instrument), polyphonic synthesizer, and for employing digita ...
. Howell's new arrangement first appeared in 1980 on '' The Leisure Hive'', for which Howell had also recorded the incidental score, and was used throughout
Tom Baker Thomas Stewart Baker (born 20 January 1934) is an English actor and writer. He is best known for having played the Fourth Doctor, fourth and longest-serving incarnation of The Doctor (Doctor Who), the Doctor in the science fiction television ...
's final season on the programme as well as
Peter Davison Peter Malcolm Gordon Moffett (born 13 April 1951), known professionally as Peter Davison, is an English actor. He made his television acting debut in 1975 and became famous in 1978 as Tristan Farnon in the BBC's television adaptation of Jame ...
's tenure as the Doctor and
Colin Baker Colin Charles Baker (born 8 June 1943) is an English actor. He played Paul Merroney in the BBC television drama series ''The Brothers (1972 TV series), The Brothers'' from 1974 to 1976 and the Sixth Doctor, sixth incarnation of The Doctor (Do ...
's first season. Between 1980 and 1985 Howell also provided incidental music for ten stories of ''Doctor Who'', as well as arranging the theme tune for K-9 and Company, composed by
Ian Levine Ian Geoffrey Levine (born 22 June 1953) is a British songwriter, producer, DJ, and prominent Doctor Who fan. A populariser of Northern soul music in the UK, and a developer of the style of hi-NRG, he has co-written and co-produced records with sa ...
and Fiachra Trench. In 1986, Nathan-Turner commissioned a new theme arrangement by Dominic Glynn, ending Howell's association with Doctor Who on television. Since 2013 he has been part of the Radiophonic Workshop Band, touring the UK and abroad with Radiophonic archivist Mark Ayres and other former members of the Workshop.


Other work

Aside from ''Doctor Who'', Howell's Radiophonic Workshop work includes an album of original recordings in 1978 entitled '' Through A Glass Darkly'' (credited to Peter Howell & The Radiophonic Workshop) and "Greenwich Chorus", a piece which accompanied an episode of
Jonathan Miller Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE (21 July 1934 – 27 November 2019) was an English theatre and opera director, actor, author, television presenter, comedian and physician. After training in medicine and specialising in neurology in the late 19 ...
's popular ''The Body in Question'' which was controversial at the time for its use of the
vocoder A vocoder (, a portmanteau of ''vo''ice and en''coder'') is a category of speech coding that analyzes and synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data compression, multiplexing, voice encryption or voice transformation. The vocoder wa ...
. Howell composed the theme tunes to '' The Machine that Changed the World (1992)''/''The Dream Machine (UK)'', a 5-part television series on the history of the electronic digital computer, to Robert Hughes' 1979-80 8-part series on Modern art ('' The Shock of the New''), and to the ''Badger Girl'' and ''Spywatch'' series of the long-running
BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...
schools' programme, '' Look and Read''. Howell was responsible for the
BBC Video 2 Entertain Video Limited, trading as BBC Studios Home Entertainment, is a British video and music publisher founded in 2004 following the merger of BBC Video and Video Collection International by BBC Worldwide and the Woolworths (United Kingd ...
logo's music in 1984. In 1986, Howell composed music for the BBC children's TV show The Children Of Green Knowe. For the 1987 film ''Life Story'', Howell took over the music "Grand Choral" from the film '' Day for Night'', which
Georges Delerue Georges Delerue (12 March 1925 – 20 March 1992) was a French composer who composed over 350 scores for cinema and television. Delerue won numerous important film music awards, including an Academy Award for '' A Little Romance'' (1980), three Cà ...
had composed.


Most recently

In recent years Howell's incidental music for the ''Doctor Who'' stories '' The Leisure Hive'' and '' Meglos'' has appeared on volumes 3 and 4 of the ''Doctor Who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop'' compilation albums, and much of his back catalogue, including his early folk material with John Ferdinando has also been re-released on CD. In 2021, Howell published his autobiography ''Radiophonic Times'' via Obverse Books.


References


External links


Peter Howell's Official Site
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Howell, Peter BBC Radiophonic Workshop members English electronic musicians English television composers Living people Date of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) 1949 births