Classical music has a cult following

Classical music and an "evil cult" are unlikely bedfellows. But my fun story Stockhausen, chaotic music and communism about the oboeist of the Divine Performing Arts Orchestra proved to be a bit more serious than I thought. Several readers have pointed out that the orchestra and The Epoch Times newspaper which ran the story are closely connected with Falun Gong.

A BBC website is headed 'Falun Gong - an evil cult?' and goes on to say 'Claiming to be an ancient technique of self-development, Falun Gong is an eclectic mixture of Taoist and Buddhist principles with a sprinkling of extraterrestrials ... On 22 July, 1999, Falun Gong was declared an 'evil cult' by the Beijing authorities, and totally banned, meriting 'a serious ideological and political struggle that would have a bearing on the future of the Communist Party and the State ... in terms of typical cult techniques, Falun Gong is given a 50:50 Yes/No rating by Time Asia. While it is led by a charismatic leader, fosters an 'us versus them' attitude, and uses jargon that outsiders don't understand, it does not exert pressure on people to join, its believers do not remove themselves from society, nor are they required to donate large sums of money, their homes, jobs, and so on, to a central organisation.'

An unconnected bit of trivia is that I was in Guyana shortly before the dreadful Jonestown mass suicides in 1978. On a much more positive note Georgetown, Guyana, which we were visiting, was the birthplace of the Berlin Philharmonic's first black conductor.
Header image showing Falun Gong members is from a useful article in The Johnsonian, newspaper of Winthrop University. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Classical - the music of the Whites

October is Black History Month here in the UK when we celebrate African and Caribbean contributions to our society with a month long programme of events. We have celebrated classical musicians of colour On An Overgrown Path recently with features on the Guyanese clarinettist and conductor Rudolph Dunbar and the Afro-French composer Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and with contributions from John McLaughlin Williams. Today, to mark the start of Black History Month, here is the story of 32 year old Nigerian pianist Sodi Braide, with thanks to the excellent AfriClassical and Le Piano Bleu websites.

Sodi Braide (above) was born in 1975 to Nigerian parents in Newcastle, U.K. His parents were academics; both were scientists but music lovers as well. In December 1979, Sodi returned to Nigeria with his parents, where it was very difficult to find good teachers. At the time, there was no conservatory of music in the country, and he had to travel 60 miles for piano lessons, saying "When I think back on it, I tell myself it is a miracle that I became a pianist."

In 1987, as a result of a competition supported by the French Cultural Center in Lagos, Sodi Braide was awarded a scholarship to study in France with Françoise Thinat. He was successful in a number of high profile competitions, including Pretoria, South Africa (1996), Leeds, UK (2003) and the Van Cliburn (jury discretionary prize, 2005).

Sodi now lives in Paris where he has benefitted from the enlightened support of the Cultures France programme. This has allowed him to undertake a number of overseas tours, notably of Latin America, and he has recently recorded a CD of works of César Franck for the Lyrinx label (right).

The story of Sodi Braide is another resounding endorsement of visionary educational programmes, and his achievements provide a powerful role model for young people from ethnic minorities everywhere. His own words about the 1996 competition in Pretoria say it all in Black History Month:

“It was just after the end of apartheid, and some were really thunderstruck to discover that in fact there was not a cultural barrier due to skin color! ... I had already played one or two times in South Africa, and I remembered that most of the South Africans, at the time, had never seen seen a Black pianist of classical music, “music of the Whites”, what's more in the finals of such a competition. It was just after the end of apartheid, and some were really thunderstruck to discover that in fact there was not a cultural barrier due to skin color!"

Now read about the Berlin Philharmonic's first Black conductor.
The interview with Sodi Braide was originally published in French on Le Piano Bleu website, which is where my photos also come from. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The long tail of blogs

Are my jokes really that diffficult? Elsewhere it is good to see Rudolph Dunbar having a great innings, while in the paid for media Karlheinz Stockhausen is in to bat, and here's a classical blog aggregator that's worth a look (and a wait). But the trouble is aggregators ignore the long tail of blogs, such as Le Regard de James, which is the blog my header photo comes from. But who cares? - their nutritional value is lower than a bag of crisps.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

A year of stories that had to be told

On An Overgrown Path is three years old today, and this is post number 1171. The site has received close to a million hits, and the word count is now not far short of a staggering half a million. That is twice as many words as Alex Ross' new book, and half as many as today's BBC Radio 3 presenters use to introduce a single concert.

The last twelve months gave me the opportunity to explore several new paths. Two of the most rewarding articles to write were those on the black Guyanese conductor Rudolph Dunbar and the Afro-French composer Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges. Appropriately, yesterday was the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, and I am writing this before we dash off to the radio studio to present a studio discussion on the slave trade.

My radio co-presenter is my wife Sorojini. As usual several different paths intersect here. Sorojini was born in Georgetown, Guyana, as was Rudolph Dunbar. A colonial labour system brought the families of both to that country from different continents. And Guyana has been involved for more than 150 years in a border dispute with Venezuela, a country that has featured frequently on the path, and one that I will return to later

Internet radio is another new path I've been exploring. Future Radio, here in Norwich, has been very generous in giving me carte blanche to present an hour of contemporary music every Sunday at 5.00pm British Summer Time. This has meant that listeners around the world have been able to listen to rarely heard music by Mikis Theodorakis, Alan Hovhaness, William Howard Schuman, Thea Musgrave, Pierre Boulez, Edmund Rubbra and others.

Benjamin Britten has, of course, remained a constant on the path throughout the year. In April I wrote one of the year's saddest posts, and marked the death of Britten's friend and collaborator Mstislav Rostropovich with a small personal appreciation.

On An Overgrown Path's commitment to contemporary music has increased. Posts on Pierre Boulez , Bruno Maderna, Jonathan Harvey and Lou Harrison were particularly well received, and it was fun to see my tribute to Conlon Nancarrow reminding some high profile US sites that it was the tenth anniversary of Nancarrow's death.

Less well received were my posts on the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela and Gustavo Dudamel. But I continue to remain uneasy about their volatile mix of musical vision, politics and commercialism, and believe that Venezuelan flags (see above via Deceptively Simple) and union jacks (see below via BBC) are both out of place at the BBC Proms. Youngsters just having fun? Please tell that to the families of the millions of young people who died last century defending freedom of speech. At last the paid-for media, and some other blogs, have also started to question the link between music and politics in Venzuela. And the answers given by Dudamel certainly do not make me change my views.

Of course the Venezuelan music education system is a fantastic way of rejuvenating classical music. But others are also doing great work, and my sequence of reports on the Aldeburgh Festival showed that 'reaching out' and 'selling out' don't always have to rhyme. It was also pleasing to see Aldeburgh Music recognising the importance of music blogs.

In February this year classical music had its 'Diana moment' with the Joyce Hatto 'forgery' revelations, and I tried, without much success, to introduce some balanced reporting. The Joyce Hatto story was, by miles, the year's biggest storm in a teacup.

I received far more satisfaction from writing articles about Elisabeth Lutyens and Elizabeth Maconchy, while the story of Timothy Brady's opera Edalat Square, about the hanging of two young gay men in Iran, just had to be told. My research for the post on Reginald Goodall was also important, not least because the path led to Rudolph Dunbar.

The year also had a lot of laughs. And I am very grateful to Norman Lebrecht for providing most of them.

It was also pleasing to write that youth is not a time of life, but a state of mind. Particularly as this modestly successful blog is written by a 57 year old.

I must apologise to my many overseas readers for the seemingly endless articles deploring the state of BBC Radio 3 and the Proms. But when an old, trusted and loved friend is in agony you desperately want to change things. And a hat tip to Nicholas Kenyon for sending me the longest, most opaque, and least read article posted On An Overgrown Path in the last twelve months. Thanks Nick, and I look forward to receiving my signed copy of your new history of the Barbican Centre.

On a personal front it was very moving to see my photo feature on the inspirational Taizé Community become such an important web resource via Wikipedia. Father Roger's ecumenical community remains a beacon of light in an often dark world.

Apologies to the many readers who emailed me and did not receive an immediate reply. The comments that appear on the blog are the tip of a very large iceberg. Unfortunately some eloquent messages remain buried beneath many from Nigerians generously offering to share their financial windfalls with me.

I hope that the next twelve months will be as rewarding as those just ended. But before my new blogging year gets into its stride On An Overgrown Path will be taking a sea interlude (that's the East Anglian equivalent of a hiatus) in September. In past years I've run the blog at arms length while away, but the size of the readership, its topicality and the risk of legal challenges now make that impractical. So after several more posts, on Monday (Aug 27) I'll be locking the blog down for four weeks, a gap that I'm sure that the many other fine music blogs will fill perfectly well.

Thank you readers for your support, comments, and corrections. In the coming months I will keep following the path mapped so eloquently by Libby Purves in Radio: A True Love Story.

'All that you can do is to make - and publicise - the best and most passionately well-crafted programmes you can think of. Ratings have to be watched, but calmly and with a sense of proportion. You have to believe that if even one person is swayed, or inspired, or changed, or comforted, by a programme, then that programme has been worthwhile'.


Top image credit Deceptively Simple. Lower image credit BBC. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Echoes of Rudolph Dunbar on BBC Radio 4

My article on the little known black Guyanese conductor and clarinettist Rudolph Dunbar (above), which I published here on April 23 2007, has attracted a large number of readers according to my server logs, including a number from the BBC. My story ran under the headline Berlin Philharmonic's First Black Conductor, and is also linked from Wikipedia.

Dunbar's inspirational story needs to reach a wider audience, so I was delighted to find BBC Radio 4 broadcasting the Strange Story of Rudolph Dunbar today (August 7 2007). Here is the BBC blurb:

Strange Story of Rudolph Dunbar
Tuesday 7 August 2007 11:30-12:00 (Radio 4 FM)
Wayne Marshall tells the story of Rudolph Dunbar.

Born into poverty in British Guiana, Dunbar became a well-known jazz and classical clarinettist as well as having a European career as a classical conductor.

Despite becoming the first black man to conduct at the Royal Albert Hall and having conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra just days after the end of the Second World War, Dunbar ended his life in obscurity in Britain, convinced that the BBC in particular had barred his way to greater things.

You can to listen to the BBC programme on demand until August 15 here. Following my article as you listen to the broadcast is really quite interesting.

Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Musicians of the African diaspora

Joshua Nemith blogs from Cincinnati ~ 'Via On an Overgrown Path - AfriClassical.com is a wonderful resource that presents information on classical composers and musicians of African heritage. It includes men and women from diverse populations around the globe, including Africans, African-Americans, Afro-Latin Americans, and Afro-Europeans. A broad historical range is covered from the 1700s up to the current day.

Many people do not realize the breadth of these contributions to the concert music tradition. It is true we often focus quite heavily on the “Dead White Guys” of the European art music tradition, such as Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Strauss, Mahler, etc. But all through this history non-whites have been composing, conducting, and performing music. Sometimes their art got noticed, many times it did not.

Today it is becoming increasingly important for the concert stage to present and embrace more diverse programming from outside the standardized canon. I’ve felt quite strongly about this since I decided to become a professional musician and am happy to see that performance institutions are evolving towards inclusion of quality musical products from lesser-known composers and musicians. AfriClassical serves as a great introduction to some of these musicians. There are biographies, audio samples, and links to other pertinent sites and information. As an example, check out an excerpt of the cool performance of Margaret Allison Bonds' "Troubled Water" by pianist William H. Chapman Nyaho (photo above).

Not least important is the fact that many of these composers wrote great piano music. Over the years I’ve played some terrific pieces by African-American composers George Walker, Duke Ellington, William Grant Still, Scott Joplin, and Hannibal. Even though some of these are household names (like Joplin and Ellington), their solo and ensemble concert music is often unfairly overlooked. It is great that AfriClassical is out there to help raise awareness about their repertoire as well as the music of more (unfortunately) obscure black musicians. Many audiences would appreciate more attention paid to it.'

Thanks Joshua, and there are lots more interesting paths to the musical diaspora from my John McLaughlin Williams tag.
Text credit Joshua Nemith. Image credit Nyaho.com. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Classical musicians of color

Email just received ~ I am very impressed by the scholarly character of your post on Rudolph Dunbar (left). As you may know, a link to the post was published in the June edition of the Myrtle Hart Society Newsletter, devoted to composers and musicians of color.

Since 2000 I have had a website which is now called AfriClassical.com. It is an introductory resource which presents the lives and music of 52 composers, conductors and instrumentalists of African descent. Several are from the U.K. I focus on updating the website, especially the pages on Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges, which I have just finished revising to include the findings of Joseph de Saint-George, le Chevalier Noir by Pierre Bardin. It is the sixth biography I have read on him.

Although my site is closed to additional profiles, I receive information on many classical composers and musicians of color from visitors. I share it with my principal advisor, Dr. Dominique-René de Lerma. He is Professor of Music at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin and is the former Director of the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College, Chicago.

His research appears on nearly every page of AfriClassical.com. You may be interested that my contact in London has taken a professional interest is Maxine Franklin, the Jamaican pianist.

It seems to me you may be interested in the Black History aspect of some of my profiles, particularly that of Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges. His role in saving the French Republic from "The Treason of Dumouriez" should be part of any study of 18th century European History, in my opinion.

Best wishes, Bill Zick, Webmaster, Africaclassical.com, Ann Arbor, Michigan

Now read how music can help change the world
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Reginald Goodall – the holy fool

Goodall showed that as a Wagner conductor he has no equal. His control of the musical architecture is absolute. The huge span of the score was shaped as if in a single phrase. At the same time the music seemed to move spontaneously, by its own inner force, and with a glowing beauty of sound, an inevitability of rise and fall and a kind of natural momentousness of expression that will remain ideal.

These were the words of David Cairns writing in the Sunday Times in August 1987. The occasion was Reginald Goodall’s last ever conducting engagement, the Proms concert performance of Act 3 of Parsifal shown in the rehearsal photo above. Wagner’s saga of the holy fool somehow sums up Goodall; as David Cairns wrote he was a Wagner conductor without equal, he was also a champion of Britten’s music who conducted the first performance of Peter Grimes, yet he flirted with fascism and alienated himself from many who tried to help him during a career that lasted more than sixty-five years.

Goodall was born on 13 July 1901 in the cathedral city of Lincoln. At the age of 9 he entered Lincoln Cathedral choir school where he received the classic choral training that was central to English church music, and was also introduced to Wagner’s music by his visionary teacher, Dr G.J. Bennett, who had studied in Berlin and Munich. But scandal interrupted the English cathedral idyll. Goodall’s father, a solicitor’s clerk, was charged with forgery and sentenced to eight months in prison. The scandal meant that the young Reginald and his brother were taken by their mother to live with relatives in Springfield, Massachusetts.


Goodall left school in Springfield aged 15, and became a machinist in an engineering works. Relief from this tedium came from concerts by the Boston Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestras, the latter conducted by Leopold Stokowski whose approach to orchestral balance was an influence on Goodall in later years. In 1917 Goodall moved to Burlington on the western end of Lake Ontario in Canada, where his father had settled after leaving prison, and the young Reginald entered Hamilton Conservatory to study music. He graduated with first-class honours and aged 19 started his career as a professional musician as church organist and choirmaster in Dundas, near Hamilton. While there he was introduced to Renaissance polyphony and Gregorian Chant by the influential Toronto musician Healey Willan.

Goodall would probably have stayed in Canada for the rest of his career had he not met the visiting Sir Hugh Allen, who was director of the Royal College of Music in London and professor of music at Oxford University. The chance meeting resulted in Goodall returning to England to study at the Royal Academy, but his period there was not particularly productive, and it was his appointment as organist at the Anglo-Catholic church of St Alban’s, Holborn that was more important. The photo above shows Goodall with members of the choir, and during his time at St Alban’s he built the reputation of the choir in repertoire ranging from renaissance masterpieces including Byrd’s Mass for Three Voices, through Bruckner to Stravinsky and contemporary composers such as Jan Mul from the Netherlands. Goodall was also a virtuoso organist and his repertoire included Tournemire, Widor, Vierne and Dupré.

The reputation of the St Alban’s Choir rapidly spread, and in December 1934 the boys sang in the first public performance of A Boy Was Born by an up and coming young composer called Benjamin Britten. The occasion was one of the contemporary music concerts promoted by a trio of women, Iris Lemare, the violinist Anne Mcnaghten, and the composer Elisabeth Lutyens who featured herself in an article here recently. This early collaboration was the start of a working relationship between 'Ben' and 'Reggie' which was to bear important fruits.

Goodall’s pioneering work was not confined to choral music. He also worked with the amateur Bishopsgate orchestra where just one of his concerts included the first British performances of two works by German composers, a neo-classical divertimento by Max Trapp who was featured in my article Furtwängler and the forgotten new music, and Die Jahreszeiten from another composer featured here, Ernst Krenek. And that path takes us to Goodall the fool.

During the 1930s Goodall made several visits to Germany, the last in 1935 when the Nazis were in full control. On his return he extolled the virtues of Germany under the Nazis, and was vocal both in his concerns over the influx of refugee Jewish musicians, and in his criticism of the BBC for employing them. Goodall’s views may have been influenced by his wife who was a strict Roman Catholic, at a time when the Catholic press was taking an anti-Bolshevik and pro-Mussolini position. In September 1939 three important events occurred. On Sept 1 Hitler invaded Poland, two days later Britain declared war on Germany, and on Sept 8 Reginald Goodall joined the British Union of Fascists.

The outbreak of war had profound effects on musical life in Britain. Orchestra budgets were cut and musicians were made redundant. The Bournemouth Municipal (now Symphony) Orchestra was one of the casualties, with twenty-six players axed. The redundant players formed the core of the newly formed Wessex Symphony Orchestra, and Goodall was appointed principal conductor. The orchestra and its conductor went on to do some remarkable things including giving early performances of Britten’s Les lluminations and Violin Concerto.

At a time when concerts were few the Wessex Orchestra attracted leading conductors and soloists, including, in a remarkable crossing of overgrown paths, a young black conductor called Rudolph Dunbar. But even though Britain was at war with Germany Goodall continued to support the fascist cause. He campaigned for the British Union of Fascist, called the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck ‘disgusting’, and was actually arrested briefly for expressing pro-German views in public. Even after the war Goodall was unrepentant. He was recruited by Walter Legge to take part in a tour of to Germany in 1946. Some of the performers visited the site of the Belsen concentration camp, only to be told by Goodall, who did not make the visit, that Belsen was British fiction manufactured in a leading movie studio.


It is almost impossible to believe, but just one month after Germany surrendered the pro-fascist Goodall conducted the triumphant first performance of Peter Grimes, an opera composed by pacifist Benjamin Britten and with another pacifist Peter Pears singing the title role. Through the war Goodall had maintained the contacts with Britten started at St Alban’s, Holborn. In fact Goodall had conducted a remarkable chamber concert of works by Les Six in September 1942 when, in addition to Denis Brain playing the horn, Britten had played the celesta in works by Louis Durey, and by Germaine Tailleferre, the only female member of Les Six. The first of the two Britten photos above shows the composer with Rudolf Bing and the baritone Edmund Donlevy who sung the role of Ned Keene in the first performance of Peter Grimes, while the lower shows Britten at a 1945 rehearsal of the opera with Goodall, the producer Eric Crozier and the designer Kenneth Green.

In 1944 Goodall joined Sadler Wells Opera, and this company inherited the first performance of Britten’s Peter Grimes when the Tanglewood premiere (it was commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky in memory of his wife) was cancelled due to wartime transport difficulties. Britten specifically requested that Goodall conduct the first performance in preference to several other more experienced conductors, and the premiere on 7 June 1945 was a triumph, with both Britten and Goodall being lavishly praised by the critics.

Goodall went on to conduct The Rape of Lucretia for Britten’s English Opera Group. But the most definitely heterosexual Goodall found Britten’s next opera, Albert Herring, ‘prissy’ and the composer himself ‘East Anglican’, and their working relationship cooled. In 1946 Goodall joined Covent Garden as assistant conductor to music director Karl Rankl, and Goodall conducted Britten’s Gloriana in, of all places, Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia in 1953. Later the same year Goodall replaced Britten as conductor for Peter Grimes at Covent Garden, and the excellent reviews he received set him on a path that took him from a footnote in musical history to legendary Wagnerian.


Based on the success of Peter Grimes Goodall was given four performances of Walkure on tour. The first was in the suburbs of London, and a glowing review from a young Andrew Porter in Opera magazine started Goodall on the path to being recognised as a Wagner specialist. But despite this acclaim he languished at Covent Garden for more than a decade coaching and occasionally conducting, and spending his holidays at the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth .

It was not until 1968 that Goodall really achieved recognition as a conductor of Wagner. The breakthrough came when a centenary production of The Mastersingers in English by Sadlers Wells Opera was rapturously received by the critics. The legendary English National Opera Ring Cycle of 1973, together with the EMI recordings completed in 1977, finally confirmed Goodall’s reputation as one of the greatest living interpreters of Wagner. Tristan followed in 1979 with Welsh National Opera, and with English National Opera in 1981. My photo above shows Goodall taking a curtain call at the 1973 Ring with Rita Hunter (Brunnhilde) and Alberto Remedios (Siegfried). Goodall's stature was recognised in 1985 when he was knighted for services to music.

On 4 April 1986 Sir Reginald conducted Parsifal for English National Opera. Earlier in the day he had been upset by the news of the death of Peter Pears, and the last act of Goodall's life started to unfold. That Coliseum Parsifal was the last full length opera that Goodall conducted. As described at the beginning of this article he went on perform Act 3 of Parsifal at the Proms the following year, a concert staging that marked the end of Goodall’s career. He lived for four more years in declining health, and Reginald Goodall, the holy fool, died on 5 May 1990 at the age of eighty-eight.

Conductor's are notorious for their political naivety. But hopefully Goodall will be remembered not for his foolish politics, but for a recorded legacy which is infused with humanity. His Wagner discs are best known, but his Bruckner and Britten are also essential listening.

* We are very fortunate to have an excellent biography of Goodall, from which this articles draws with full acknowledgement, and from which the accompanying photos are reproduced for review purposes. Reggie, the Life of Reginald Goodall by John Lucas (Julia MacRae Books ISBN 1856810518) is a model musical biography - well researched, objective, and very readable. The 1993 book is now, sadly, out of print, but is relatively easy to find from book dealers.

Now read Wagner - I don't get to hear anything else
All photos are reproduced with full acknowlegements from Reggie, the life of Reginald Goodall by John Lucas. Source credits, when known, are in descending order photos 1 Clive Barda, 3 and 4 Hulton Deutsch and 5 The Observer. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Berlin Philharmonic's first Black conductor

“At a concert this week in Berlin, Berlin's famed 65-year-old Philharmonic Orchestra was led by a U.S. war correspondent in battledress. Besides being a war correspondent, the guest conductor was a Negro, born in British Guiana. The 2,000 Berliners and the 500 Allied soldiers in the audience found it quite an experience. They applauded warmly when the conductor led the orchestra through Weber's familiar Oberon and Tchaikovsky's Pathétique. They broke into cheers, and called him back five times, when he gave them Berlin's first hearing of fellow-Negro William Grant Still's boisterous, bluesy Afro-American Symphony.

Slender, serious Rudolph Dunbar is no musical freshman. He studied at Manhattan's Julliard School, has several times conducted the London Philharmonic. He was in Berlin as correspondent for the Associated Negro Press of Chicago. Shortly before the Berlin Philharmonic's Conductor Leo Borchard was accidentally killed by U.S. sentries, he had invited Dunbar to guest-conduct. U.S. occupation authorities were all for it, though their interest was more in teaching the Germans a lesson in racial tolerance than in Dunbar's musicianship.”

The news story above was published in Time on September 10, 1945 when the career of Rudolph Dunbar was at its peak. Dunbar lived for another forty-three years, but what happened in those years to the first Black musician to conduct the Berlin and London Philharmonic Orchestras is a mystery. The story starts at the turn of the last century in British Guiana (now Guyana). The date of Dunbar’s birth is variously given as 1902 or 1907, and classical music was an unlikely career for a Black Guyanese boy at that time. But the young Dunbar’s interest was sparked by hearing transcriptions of Wagner and Elgar played in Georgetown by the British Guiana Militia Band. He joined the Militia Band as an apprentice clarinettist at the age of 14, and stayed with them for five years.


His talent was such that he left the band when he was 19 to study at the Institute of Musical Art (now the Juilliard) in New York, and lived in the city until he graduated in 1925. His subjects at the Juilliard were composition, clarinet and piano, but he was also active in the Harlem jazz scene, and was clarinet soloist on recordings by The Plantation Orchestra (photo above). While in New York he became a friend and champion of the African-American composer William Grant Still, and their correspondence is held today at the University of Arkansas.

In 1925 Dunbar moved to Paris as a post-graduate, studying conducting with Philippe Gaubert (below), and composition with Paul Vidal and clarinet with Louis Cahuzac. He also spent time with Felix Weingartner in Vienna. Dunbar’s reputation as a clarinettist grew, and reached the widow of Claude Debussy who invited him to give a private recital in her apartment in 1930 for members of the Paris Conservatoire.

Dunbar moved to London in 1931 to work as a music critic, and he also started the first ever clarinet school, which attracted students from around the world. His reputation was such that in 1939 he was commissioned to write a textbook on the clarinet, and his Treatise on the Clarinet (Boehm System) became the standard reference work for the instrument. It remained in print though ten editions, and today commands high prices as a collectors item.

Dunbar remained active as a jazz musician, and in the 1930s in Britain he led two jazz groups, the All British Coloured Band (also known as the Rumba Coloured Orchestra), and Rudolph Dunbar and his African Polyphony, and made pioneering recordings of West Indian music with both these groups. He also composed, and his 1938 ballet score Dance of the Twenty-First Century (described by Dunbar as ‘ultra modern’), which was written for the famous Cambridge University Footlights Club, was broadcast nationally by NBC with the composer conducting.

The outbreak of war in Europe opened up conducting opportunities for Dunbar, and in 1942 he led the London Philharmonic in the Royal Albert Hall in a concert that was described at the time as a fund-raiser for “Britain’s coloured allies”. He wrote for the Associated Negro Press of Chicago, and this gave him credentials as a war correspondent in Europe. He took part in the Normandy Landings with a Black regiment, and was the first foreigner to conduct a symphony orchestra in Paris after it was liberated, and then went on to conduct in Berlin.

In 1945 Dunbar presented a Festival of American Music in the Théatre des Champs Elysees, Paris with the Conservatoire Orchestra and pianist Jeanne-Marie Darré. The programme included the premiere of In Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy by William Grant Still (right), as well as Still's Afro-American Symphony. The following year Dunbar made his US conducting debut with the Hollywood Bowl Symphony in a programme that again included Grant Still’s Afro-American Symphony. In other concerts he programmed the music of the Afro-British composer Samuel Coleridge Taylor (photo below).

Dunbar was a pioneering activist against racism. When asked at his US debut if he would settle in the country he replied: “I think I will make my home in Paris where, if you are good, they will applaud you whether you are pink, white or black, and if you are bad they will whistle at you.” But he was also supportive of the US, and objected to the British Government promoting his career for political ends, saying “It is not the British who have done it for me, it is the Americans.”

At the end of the war the promise was immense. Dunbar was established as a leading performer and authority on the clarinet, his conducting career was in the ascendant as concert life restarted, and he was seen as a role-model for West Indians. But the promise wasn’t fulfilled. Dunbar is documented as being the first black conductor of a symphony orchestra in Poland (1959), and Russia (1964), both concerts were in Soviet bloc countries at the peak of the Cold War. He promoted concerts for the Jamaican Hurricane Relief Fund in 1951, and toured British Guiana in the 1950s conducting the country’s Militia Band, Philharmonic Orchestra and a youth choir. Rudolph Dunbar died in London in June 1988.

Were Dunbar's conducting talents simply eclipsed by de-Nazified conductors returning to the podium after the war, or were there other reasons why the promise wasn't fulfilled? Exactly what happened remains a mystery, but there are some tantalising clues. Dunbar's brief obituary in the Musical Times says: 'He gradually withdrew from public life, and devoted himself to fighting racism and trying to increase black involvement in Western art music.

But there seems to be more to it than a gradual withdrawal from public life. It is known that Dunbar conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra. One of the leading authorities on music in Guyana is Dr Vibert C. Cambridge at Ohio University, and in an article for the Stabroek News in Guyana in August 2004 Dr Cambridge quotes from an interview Rudolph Dunbar gave six months before his death in 1988:

“Dunbar spoke about the particular vindictiveness of a producer/director of music at the BBC who derailed his musical career in Europe. Dunbar described that director of music as “despicable and vile” and the BBC “as stubborn as mules and ruthless as rattlesnakes”.

Today Rudolph Dunbar (left) is remembered as a one of a pioneering group of West Indians who fought racism in the UK. The musician who was the first Black conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, and who wrote a standard reference work on the clarinet, does not warrant a single mention in the current or earlier editions of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, or other major music reference books. Why remains a mystery.

Sources:
* Rudolph Dunbar by Dr Vibert C. Cambridge, Stabroek News August 22, 2004
* W. Rudolph Dunbar: Pioneering Orchestra Conductor, The Black Perspective in Music, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Autumn, 1981), pp. 193-225
* Rudolph Dunbar, The Musical Times, Vol. 129, No. 1749 (Nov., 1988), p. 619
* Debut in the Bowl, Time Sept 02 1946
* Rhythm in Berlin, Time Sept 10 1945
* The Pantheon of West Indian Heroes Framed, Black Britain, July 8 2006.
* Settling Scores: German Music, Denazification, and the Americans, 1945-1953, by David Monod, NewMusicBox Oct 24 2006.
* Listeners to the BBC Radio 4 programme on Rudolph Dunbar broadcast on August 7 2007 should read Echoes of Rudolph Dunbar on the BBC.
(c) Bob Shingleton 2007

Now read about Multicultural, multimedia, and banned.
I have contacted Dr Cambridge for more information on the later years of Rudolph Dunbar's career. Other information from readers is very welcome, updates will be published. With thanks to John McLaughlin Williams who read a draft of this article. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk