US orchestra mourns its founding conductor
RIPThe McLean Symphony of Virginia has reported the death of Dingwall Fleary, its founder in 1972. Dingwall was 82.
As a young man, Dingwall conducted the Baltimore and St Louis Symphony orchestras, but he was never considered as music director material by major organisations, possibly because of his race.
He was greatly cherished in McLean and remained music director of its orchestra to the day he died.
Dingwall Fleary (please note the spelling) was truly a pillar to his community and a friend, mentor, and inspiration to the thousands of musicians and audience members whose lives he touched over his lifetime
“possibly because of his race”? Or possibly because of the racist white establishment? There’s a difference.
I have no doubt that Dingwall faced obstacles to his career because of racial prejudice in the 1960s and 1970s in the orchestral world, but what is remarkable is that like many of his generation who succeeded, despite such obstacles, he not only showed no bitterness, but conveyed love to all the musicians he led. His orchestras were in affluent mostly shite communities. He led services in different churches and devoted a concert to the victims of the Holocaust. He also was a patriot who loved to play the National Anthem but also toured a 2 man show on the life of Paul Robeson. He devoted concerts to African American Composers and other underplayed American composers. He was a man of convictions and a uniter, not a hater.
He led a remarkable life. In the brutally biased classical music world, pick your poison. Talent, sexuality, nationality, race and so on.
Race is the least of it in such a highly competitive world where there is much more talent available than orchestras to hire it.
The world of my parents was filled with classical orchestras led by white Europeans. The music itself was still mainstream and commercially viable.
Over the last 60 years it has all but vanished with more and more classical orchestras struggling and institutions disappearing every year.
I’d guess that at the current rate, in 20 years live classical music will be quite the exception.
Ask yourself why?
Answer, because it was sold so badly to younger generations and had few leaders who could teach and reach young people to pass the love and appreciation of it to those who followed.
With the exception of Leonard Bernstein, conductors were white dudes with thick European accents and thicker arrogant attitudes. Essa Pecca Salomon comes to mind. A real shithead.
My point is Dingwall and others like him were needed to reach diverse communities and teach the beauty of classical music to those who never had the opportunity of being exposed to it.
To keep an art form alive and healthy, it’s hero’s must rise from the everyday folk next door, not conceited foreign demigods.
American classical music should have belonged to Americans, American orchestras and American conductors.
Instead we let it die and replaced it with another all American sound, hip hop and rap. They should have all coexisted in harmony as American music.