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HIGH CULTURE, LOW POLITICS: THE DEATH OF THE DALLAS SYMPHONY

By John Merwin |

It must have been all of five minutes after the cheery speeches about how the Dallas symphony would rise again and make all of Dallas proud. Right there in the Fairmont Gold Room they sat, the downtown businessmen who had dried up the symphony’s money tree but were going to water it again.

Up walks a symphony trustee to a musician, who had just lost 11 weeks pay, and says, in her sweetest voice: “Looks like you all will just have to find second jobs. Like pumping gas.” Great. Just great.

“When I heard that,” fumes one red-faced musician, “I felt like calling her up and suggesting she take up domestic work on the side. I’ve been studying music since I was seven, and that was 30 years ago. I’ve given 16 years of my life to this orchestra, and now some Johnny-come-lately-trustee wants me to pump gas.”

And so it goes. Badly.

The economics are simple. Last season’s minimum pay for a symphony musician was $11,700 over 47 weeks, and next season, if there is one, the symphony association is offering $8,900 for a 33-week season. The association calls it “our best and final offer.”

“I’ll sell pencils first,” says one musician.

Just how the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, once one of the most promising orchestras in the country, suddenly fell apart during one stormy week last spring, has been largely ignored or misinterpreted to date. Instead, there has been a steady diet of the easy explanations: The people of Dallas just don’t give a hoot about art. A bunch of upstart musicians bit the hand that feeds them one too many times. The symphony management was just too spendthrifty with its money, and now it’s paying the price.

These factors, of course, all played a role in the symphony’s demise, but the real answer to the puzzling collapse of the DSO is much more fundamental. It is the quintessential Dallas power story. It has to do with a slow, subtle and certain shift of attitude toward the symphony by the downtown business establishment. It has to do with the gradual erosion of the symphony’s traditionally strong leadership. And it has to do with the monstrous costs of sustaining an urban symphony orchestra these days.

Sometime during the past eight years, the powers-that-be began turning off the money. Financially generous indifference toward the symphony turned to rigid, corporate-style control. The establishment let it be known that it felt the symphony had become “financially irresponsible.” The late R. L. Thornton’s famous comment that he’d give as much money to the symphony as it wanted, “as long as I don’t have to go,” suddenly lost its charm and humor.

While the downtown folks were tossing around terms like “bottom line” and “pay your own way,” the symphony was crying “skyrocketing costs.” The result was an irreconcilable, vicious circle. The symphony, lacking anyone of the civic stature and clout to drag it out of the quagmire, called it quits.

Since then, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra has turned into kind of a cultural South Vietnam. A few music lovers have decided to stay and fight it out with the Dallas Citizens Council, which has decided the symphony needs to be run a little more like General Motors. Another sizeable contingent is heading for the wings. They don’t want to talk about, hear about or read about the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

That leaves control to those who pay the freight – a group of about 40 individuals who have traditionally bankrolled the symphony. Thus, since they are paying the tab – the community at large hasn’t given much help – there’s little room for discussion. Issue resolved.

That luncheon in the Fairmont kicked off the symphony’s June Development Drive, the first fund effort approved by Citizens Council in two years. Seeking $500,000, the under-organized drive dragged on through July and midway into August before reaching its goal. And that money, as we shall see, was collected from a short list of donors by an equally short list of callers.

Finding an appropriate starting point for this story is not easy. One might take a donkey tail and pin it anywhere on a calendar dating back 15 years. This, however, would produce a libretto roughly the thickness of an unabridged dictionary, so let’s return to the Cotton Bowl, October 18, 1970.

The Sunday night air was cool, in the high fifties, as thousands began filing into the arena for the “Symphony Spectacular.” Conductor An-shel Brusilow readied for his first major local performance, postponed from the previous Thursday because of bad weather. And then symphony musicians began arriving, in blue jeans.

Their contract stipulated musicians didn’t have to perform when the temperature fell below 68 degrees. Huddling on the field, the orchestra voted not to play, leaving the Fourth Army Band to perform, accompanied by howitzers, and the Civic Ballet to dance, accompanied by taped music.

Several weeks earlier, an unwitting publicity writer billed the night as “another last minute thriller in the Cotton Bowl.” Was it ever. The wire services moved the story of the brouhaha Sunday night and by Monday morning readers all across America were chuckling about it. Monday afternoon, then-Councilman Wes Wise denounced the symphony musicians before the City Council, and by Friday, The Dallas Times Herald was editorially blasting the musicians.

(Recently, Brusilow recalled: “I had seen a harbinger of what was to happen in the Cotton Bowl but hadn’t recognized it. After being asked to take the conducting post, I flew to Dallas, and on one cool afternoon I sneaked into the McFarlin Auditorium balcony to listen to a symphony rehearsal. Instead, all I saw were several musicians walking around the stage holding thermometers in the air. After an hour, they finally started playing.”)

All this would eventually blow over, but what happened next never would. Since that January, the symphony had been stumbling through a $400,000 fund drive, and by October had collected less than a third of the money. Symphony Board Chairman Ralph Rogers scheduled a series of luncheons with the city’s business elite, ostensibly to introduce newly arrived Maestro Brusilow, but with a dual aim of soliciting contributions. “After the musicians turned their backs on the Cotton Bowl audience, I sure couldn’t go to these people and tell them what a great new direction our symphony was taking,” Rogers recalled.

Rogers demanded a public apology from the musicians, and if he didn’t get it, “I shall resign and have nothing further to do with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.” The musicians, feeling cornered, refused to apologize for invoking a provision of their contract, and Rogers, hemmed in by his own ultimatum, resigned.

“My wife told me I was wrong,” Rogers says, “and looking back, I guess I was. I shouldn’t have issued an ultimatum I was obligated to follow through on. If I hadn’t, I’d have stayed with the symphony and the orchestra would be much better off today. I don’t mean to be immodest, but I think my record with the symphony proves it.”

Rogers, who retires this month as chairman of Texas Industries, is a management wizard, an adroit political operator and a man whose modus operandi is often viewed as autocratic. As one of Rogers’ former symphony executive committeemen put it, “We didn’t meet that often, and when we did, about all we did was just sit around and listen to Ralph tell us what was going to happen.” But for a money-eating institution like the symphony, fund raising is far more important than democracy, and say whatever you please about Ralph Rogers, he is a fund raiser extraordinaire. When the Ford Foundation offered the symphony a matching endowment grant of $2 million, Rogers not only matched it but raised more than a million additional operating dollars to tide the symphony over for the next four years. He did all this in one month, June, 1967.

Besides money power, the symphony also lost a lot of clout the day Ralph Rogers walked out. Since then, Rogers’ philanthropic interests have turned full-time to KERA-TV (Channel 13), where he has built one of the strongest links in the Public Broadcast Service and also serves as chairman of the nationwide network’s board of governors.

One reason Rogers had been so successful raising the Ford money was that some donors thought the Ford campaign would underwrite the DSO adequately to remove it, hat in hand, from the doorsteps of the business community each year. Many of the older, wealthier Dallas oligarchs didn’t give a damn about the symphony anyway, so bankrolling the orchestra back then might keep the mendicant musical monster away from their doorsteps for years to come. But it didn’t happen that way.

Not long after Rogers resigned, the symphony association signed a three-year contract which gave the musicians remuneration increases totaling $237,000 during the first year, equal to what they had gained over an entire four-year contract negotiated under Rogers in 1967. The next season those remunerations went up another $289,000. Herein lies the turning point of the symphony story. Under Rogers, the symphony trustees had pledged not to spend more money than they could reasonably anticipate taking in. “They violated their own policy,” Rogers explains, “and that’s the guts of the whole damn problem.”

When he’s for you, Ralph Rogers can flat get things done. But if Ralph Rogers isn’t for you, then he might be against you, and if that be the case, you’re in a heap of trouble. Rogers went on the warpath.



In an impromptu speech before a Goals for Dallas meeting, Rogers blasted the performing arts for being financially irresponsible, and as one symphony officer put it, “I knew right then who he was talking about and I knew we were headed for trouble.”



With Rogers gone, the Symphony Association searched desperately for a 1971 fund drive chairman. Finally Jack Vandagriff, a mid-level Texas Power & Light executive, agreed to co-chair the drive, with the promise that an influential downtown business chieftain would fill the other co-chairman spot and provide the entree for downtown door knocking. But alas, the association was unable to muster an oligarch, leaving Vandagriff to go it alone.

When a year later the downtown heavyweights, one by one, again turned down the chairmanship, the hint was oh so strong. The business community might still be willing to give money, but not gather it.



And then yet another blow. David Stretch, a business partner of Rogers’ who had run the symphony since Rogers resigned, died in March, 1972. To make matters even worse, the executive committee did something that once again infuriated Rogers. In a secret vote, the executive committee decided to tell Brusilow his three-year contract would not be renewed when it expired 18 months later. Brusilow was told, but a couple of executive committee members objected so vehemently that within a week the action was rescinded. The vote was never relayed to the full board of trustees, much less to the public, which was first to hear about the second non-renewal vote taken eight months later.

That vote occurred in November, 1972, when again the executive committee voted non-renewal, a move ratified by the trustees. Soon afterward Brusilow appeared on KERA-TV’s “Newsroom” calling the orchestra “a public trust” and asking the public to write him in an effort to force a change in the trustees’ stance. The movement failed.

In a rare contact with the symphony, Rogers advised association President Vandagriff against firing Brusilow. “I liked Brusilow as a person and for his ideas,” Rogers says. “He was willing to stay here and build an orchestra for everyone. I’m much more interested in seeing us build a decent orchestra for school children to hear than I am in seeing us build an elitist orchestra for the wealthy. If I want to hear a renowned symphony, I can fly to Boston, New York or Vienna.”

No one questioned Brusilow’s ability as a violinist and concertmaster. He was superb. But what many questioned, including the musicians, was his ability to conduct a major symphony orchestra.

A sure sign that the symphony had fallen out of favor with the business community came in July, 1972, when Vandagriff went to the Dallas County Campaign Screening Committee for what he thought would be routine approval of a $750,000 fund drive. After some delay, Republic Bank trust officer C. B. Peterson told Vandagriff the request would never make it past the screening committee. The die was cast.

The screening committee is a privately incorporated, non-profit organization which, until 1947, was part of the oligarchy’s roundtable, the Dallas Citizens Council. Although the committee’s 24 members today represent a wide variety of organizations, the chairman is traditionally a banker and the Citizens Council still heavily influences committee decisions.

You’re not required to get committee approval before raising funds in Dallas, but the record shows no large drive can succeed without it. If the committee smiles on your drive, that generally means various business groups, such as the banks’ Clearing House Association, will agree to give a set amount, say five per cent, of what you eventually raise. And, of course, those big businesses are run by wealthy Dallasites who can pitch $5,000 or $10,000 into your drive. Without them, you’re further crippled. That leaves the general public, which has no history of supporting philanthropic drives, and it’s somewhat difficult to reach them when you can’t use the newspapers. Both publishers also sit on the committee.



The screening committee thought the symphony’s request for $750,000 was far too high, about twice the usual amount. Since Rogers’ resignation, the symphony’s annual budget had crept up from $1.4 million to $2.2 million, and the committee thought that indicated financial irresponsibility, just like Ralph Rogers said it did. The largest increases were in musicians’ annual salaries, guest artists’ fees and in other concert-related expenses. The symphony association defended salary increases as finally giving its musicians a livable wage, with hopes of attracting topnotch musicians from other orchestras. The burgeoning promotional costs stemmed from an attempt to broaden the symphony’s repertoire with pop concerts and first-rate guest artists. The business community viewed this as symphonic philandering. No, there would be no fund drive for 1973.



Now that the business community had blown the whistle on DSO, it was time to appoint a committee to lay down a new direction for the organization. Citizens Council President Al Davies appointed a four-man committee to study the symphony, and dictate conditions which must be met before the screening committee would approve any more fund drives.



Finding out who served on that committee is something like unraveling the Gordian knot. One of the best ways to solve the mystery is to look over a list of Citizens Council directors (if you can find one) and determine which ones are apt to know anything about the symphony. That reduces the list to about six, and from there you telephone each one, leaving a message that you want to talk about the symphony. If the call isn’t returned, it’s a cinch he was on the committee.



The committee actually included Al Davies (Sears Roebuck), W. C. McCord (Lone Star Gas), Dewey Presley (First International Bancshares) and guess who else? Ralph Rogers.

As if there was any doubt about the solidarity of the business community on the symphony matter, one can look at this committee and see the brass collar dangling. Davies and McCord both serve on the Republic of Texas board, and to balance them, First International’s Presley was named chairman. With both big civic camps represented, Rogers was left as sort of a Rasputin who knew more about the symphony than the other three combined.

Two years later Rogers seemed surprised to know he had served on the committee. “If I was on the committee I never attended a meeting,” he said. “Al Davies did telephone me and I told him what I thought.” Rogers’ input came both directly and indirectly, but there is no doubt the Citizens Council looked to Rogers for advice. “Yes, it’s true I knew more about the symphony than anyone else,” he concedes. “After spending eight years with the symphony, about 10 hours a day, I know more about the symphony than everyone else in this city combined.”

While all this was happening, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra pranced off on a Central and South American tour, carrying along the city’s fine arts writers who sent back glowing reports of bravos and encores. (One potentially embarrassing situation was headed off when The Dallas Morning News drama critic John Neville made the trip instead of John Ardoin, the paper’s regular music critic. Ardoin had been blasting the symphony and Brusilow regularly, but had chosen to take a previously scheduled trip to New York instead of touring with the symphony, he said.)

The tour was a public relations coup. The Times Herald beamed, “The Dallas Symphony Orchestra is quite a good orchestra indeed. Under Brusilow, it has the potential for greatness.” Two months later Brusi-low’s contract was not renewed for the second time.

Unfortunately, for the DSO, neither the Times Herald nor the general public pays symphony bills. So while rank and file orchestra followers rejoiced at the tour’s apparent success, downtown businessmen were gnashing their teeth over the symphony’s $750,000 request two months earlier. And here they were off blowing money in some banana republic. (To this day former association President Jack Vandagriff maintains the tour’s losses amounted to only $21,000, although it’s easy to find other trustees who quarrel with the figure.)

That autumn, people like Vandagriff, Mrs. Margaret McDermott and Morris Jaffe lobbied in businessmen’s offices, hoping to persuade them that you don’t run a symphony like General Motors. Mission impossible.

Moving into early 1973, the association went to its longtime creditor, Republic National Bank, and obtained a $350,000 line of credit. The credit was collateralized by $2 million of the money Rogers raised and deposited in Republic’s vault where it will remain until 1976. At that time, the $2 million in Ford Foundation money will be released from a New York bank.



After holding the symphony’s fund drive at bay for nine months, (which is why the $350,000 loan was needed), the Dallas Citizens Council spoke, and put some rigid requirements on the symphony association. The committee’s report included the following demands:



● Before any public fund drive, the symphony must raise $350,000 from within its own “family” to pay off the Republic loan and free the local Ford money from collateral. Also, the Ford money must not again be used again as collateral.

● After the $350,000 is raised,the screening committee is urged toapprove a public fund drive for another $350,000. The business community will apply its usualformulas to whatever the symphony is able to raise in this drive,outside of the business community.

● From now on, complete financial control of DSO must bevested in someone who has the confidence and approval of the business community.



Whammo! The riot act had been read and the sentence had been handed down. The first requirement-raise $350,000 with no money from the business community – was the mortal blow. It would be easier to scale the Matterhorn in Hush Puppies. And after that, raise more money before the business community would pitch in its usual percentage. Meet those two conditions and the business community will honor the symphony by taking control.



Broke and demoralized, the symphony association set out to raise the $350,000 from within its own family, and after eight months of scraping, the association finally came close enough to gain screening committee fund drive approval in December, 1973. Although the Citizens Council had virtually taken over the orchestra, the worst was yet to come.



While the symphony leadership was begging for fund drive approval, it jettisoned Brusilow and hired Max Rudolf, a renowned orchestra-builder, as artistic advisor. Rudolf was to fly in from time to time and rebuild the symphony into artistic excellence. Conductor Louis Lane was wooed away from his position as resident conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, one of the best “number two” positions in the symphonic world. Both Rudolf and Lane were baited with empty promises. Rudolf became disgusted after a year when he couldn’t even talk to the withdrawn business community, much less see any money being raised. Declaring himself “too old to fool around,” the venerable Rudolf resigned in January, 1974.

It’s a safe bet that Lane won’t be around after his contract expires in May, 1975. Lane, too, became disgusted with the Citizens Council blocking fund drives, and blasted Dallas’ “self-appointed oligarchy” in a Cleveland Plain Dealer article printed during the symphony suspension last spring. On top of all this, both Rudolf and Lane suffered artistic interference from the executive committee, which drove Rudolf off, and drove Lane to demand and get a resolution, in writing, that the executive committee would not interfere with his judgment in seating players, choosing music, etc.

By January, 1974, the symphony executive committee had known for 18 months what the musicians were about to discover. The orchestra was in deep trouble, artistically and financially. On January 15 the orchestra sneaked out of town for a two-week tour of the Southeast, in what must have been the greatest escape since Dunkirk. Originally, the Citizens Council wanted the tour canceled. Orchestra manager Ken Meine tried to cancel it, but was told if DSO backed out, Columbia Artists Management Inc. would not deal with the symphony again. Convinced that the tour realistically could not be canceled, the Citizens Council then let it be known that DSO was not to publicize the tour in any way. How an 86-piece orchestra and staff could leave town for two weeks unknown to the city’s fine arts writers begs an answer. Word of the DSO’s departure did not appear in the media. “I guess the symphony didn’t put out a press release on it,” one writer said.

While the symphony was touring, relatives came to the symphony office to pick up paychecks, only to discover the checks were being delayed (while another loan was being negotiated). Upon their return, the musicians were told about the news blackout of the tour and the money problems, so now even the musicians were aware of impending disaster.

During February, Republic Na-tional Bank prepared to cut off the symphony’s loan, which had reached $600,000, the same value of the Ida Camp estate, a windfall bequeathed to the symphony months earlier. Republic’s chairman, Jim Keay, advised his board, then took action to cut off the loan as of March 1. But at the last minute Republic discovered a situation of international proportions which spared the symphony for another week.

During the first week of March, the Dallas Theater Center was sponsoring its annual fund raising program, which, much like Neiman’s Fortnight, features a different nation each year. This year it happened to be Belgium, and many of the European nation’s dignitaries were in Dallas for the promotion. If Republic had cut off” funds, Belgian violinist Edith Vol-kart would have been without a symphony to accompany her. Even worse, for the bankers, perhaps, an exhibit of Belgian school children’s paintings was on display in Republic’s lobby. Saved by the school children.

On March 12, the silent spring began. The symphony’s executive committee said goodbye to the Belgians and agreed with Keay that the loan had to be terminated and the Camp estate claimed by the bank, thus freeing the Ford money from collateral. Musicians were asked to relinquish their 11-week summer contract rights in exchange for Republic’s underwriting the remainder of the spring subscription series. The musicians said no, agreeing that a suspension might be dramatic enough to bring about a change in the symphony’s downhill slide. The suspension was announced, and word of it spread across the nation in newspapers from The New York Times to the Los Angeles Times.

“We had two reasons for cutting off the loan,” Keay said. “One was to underscore the seriousness of the symphony’s situation and the other was to make it clear to symphony trustees that they must do something toward reaching a financial solution to the orchestra’s problems.” Message received.

The rest is history. By passing the hat last spring, the symphony managed to play a few more concerts. Musicians and management took the summer suspension to arbitration, and in August, musicians won full payment for their summer season, which should devour most of the $500,000 raised last summer.

At the moment, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra is something of a musical eunuch. Morale is at rock bottom. Artistic leadership is fleeing, including many principal players. Future civic leadership is questionable.

What the symphony lacks most is clout, the civic heft to throw a good old fashioned Sunday punch when it comes fund raising time. This summer’s fund raising team was clearly assembled by the Citizens Council to redirect the organization it had humbled only months before. There were Harry Shuford (First International) and Jim Keay (Republic) insuring that both downtown civic camps were shouldering the drive. Also Citizens Council President Lee Turner and Alan Gilman, possibly the strongest young leader in town. Among them, only Gilman serves as an orchestra trustee. If the next fund drive is to succeed, men like Shuford and Keay will have to pitch in, so they can commit funds from the Clearing House Association as well as twist arms of their own bank board members, who represent large corporations.

At the top, the symphony must have a man who can bend the Citizens Council’s ear. Sincere as he was, Jack Vandagriff wasn’t a corporate magnate capable of herding the Dallas business establishment into line. That’s why Max Rudolf left and Louis Lane is bound to follow.

Glancing at a list of the 1965-66 trustees, for instance, one sees names like Camp, Cary, Chambers, Corri-gan, Crow, DeGolyer, Green and Hob-litzelle, and dozens more just like them. Looking at today’s board, you’d be hard pressed to find half a dozen names of like prestige. Association President Henry Miller found out last spring when he passed the hat not many of his trustees could afford to pitch in $2,500.

They’re missed in other ways, too. “When I was in Cleveland,” Louis Lane said, “the city’s most influential men attended concerts and afterward, social events. If I needed to discuss something with one of them, I’d mention it and we’d set up a lunch date. Here, I just don’t have that opportunity.”

Henry Miller, although not at the top echelons of Dallas power, can bend the Citizens Council’s ear. Chairman Bob Glaze isn’t a chief executive, but he does seem to have the business community’s approval.

One thing the symphony might as well accept for the time being: If the oligarchs are going to pay the fiddlers, they’ll also call the tunes. Last June’s four-hour symphony telethon netted only $28,000 from its appeal to the common folk.

By contrast, a drive approved by the screening committee the same summer drew $50,000 from the banks, $25,000 each from the Jons-sons, Fikes and McDermott Foundations and another $25,000 from Dick Galland and his company, American Petrofina. About 15 people gave $10,000 each and another 20 or so threw in $5,000 apiece. Out of the Dallas area’s 25 largest corporations, 18 contributed to the summer fund drive, in amounts ranging from $250 to $1,500. That’s three times as much as the corporate community has given in any recent year. It is people and institutions such as these who can make the symphony happen.

Aside from restoring confidence to the orchestra, several other obstacles stand between Dallas and a first-rate symphony. The most obvious is money. No first-class musicians are going to stick around long for $8,900 a year, when nearby orchestras like Houston pay $12,480 minimum, and top orchestras like Cleveland and Chicago pay minimums around $18,000.

Along with money, great orchestras are built around dynamic conductors who come and stay. Conductors walk through Dallas like a revolving door and they are more than happy to leave. And no one can claim Dallas didn’t have its chance with at least one great conductor, Georg Solti, who spent the 1961-62 season here, and is presently touring Europe with the Chicago Symphony, which he has rebuilt into one of the nation’s strongest, if not finest orchestras.

About four options exist besides the traditional formula of an 86-piece orchestra playing practically year round. The most drastic step among them is to simply forget the headache and have no orchestra. Really this option is no option at all. Corporate recruiting would be hindered, college music departments would lose a small army of excellent part-time instructors, there would be no public schools concerts, the Civic Ballet and Civic Opera would be without a symphony, just to mention a few of the drawbacks. If the city decided to form another symphony, it would take years to rebuild the orchestra. So forget this option.

Another less expensive possibility is to either reduce the orchestra to a “metropolitan” orchestra, like Fort Worth’s, or retain “major” orchestra size but reduce the length of the season. The smaller orchestra would mean a great loss in quality, and more important, it couldn’t perform much of the music Dallas loves most – Brahms, Tchaikovsky, etc. The shorter season option, which we are currently seeing employed, is vehemently opposed by the national musicians’ union, fearing the scheme could spread to other symphony orchestras. And of course, again, shorter seasons mean less annual income, which drives out the finest players.

The last option cropped up about a year ago amidst all sorts of fanfare and glorious proclamations. It fizzled on the pad. That was the Texas Philharmonic, an idea germinated several years ago by Fort Worth banker Paul Mason. Dallas and Fort Worth spent months negotiating the deal, with men like Al Davies and Charles Cul-lum handling the Dallas end in hush-hush fashion. Finally a committee was formed to map out financial details. That committee, lo and behold, included seven persons from Dallas and four from Fort Worth, just like the Regional Airport Board it was modeled after. The scheme was to build a regional orchestra that would travel North Texas, much like the Minnesota Symphony, which serves Minneapolis, St. Paul and occasionally tours the state. American Airlines Regional Vice President Warren Woodward announced he would raise $15 million from foundations to start things off, and association officials flew to Maine to tell Max Rudolf of the grandiose plans. Somehow Woodward never got around to raising the money and the Texas Philharmonic was buried somewhere in an unmarked grave, presumably out near Greater Southwest International Airport.

The fundamental question in the symphony issue is simply how bad does Dallas want an orchestra? “Your life here is easy,” Louis Lane says. “The city’s clean, there’s lots to do and the weather’s nice. In Cleveland, the orchestra is something that makes the city a little less unpleasant place to live in.”

Older cities and states have a major advantage over Dallas in that their corporate money is well-entrenched second and third generation money, which fosters the arts. Minneapolis has General Mills and Dayton-Hudson and Milwaukee has the breweries. Dallas has “new money” which seems preoccupied with brick and mortar, with the possible exception of Texas Instruments, with its Eastern-bred leadership.

In addition, older cities have concentrations of European ethnic populations, which have brought with them an inbred love for opera and the symphony. Dallas’youthful,WASPish population is musically illiterate.

No serious state aid to fine arts is on the national horizon, except in New York, where former Gov. Nelson Rockefeller established the New York State Council on the Arts. That council doles out millions annually. The federal government gives several million dollars each year to the nation’s symphonies, a tiny part of which filters down to the DSO. On the city level, the best the municipal government has been able to do is to hire the DSO for park concerts at $7,500 each. (This year’s city budget includes 15 concerts, an increase of five over last year.)

In short, the rescue of the Dallas symphony must come from private citizens, and it’s going to take a while to happen, if it ever does. And like it or not, the symphony can’t do without the influence of men like Ralph Rogers.

“If you mean to say I’m influential because they adopted my philosophy again,” says Rogers, breaking into one of his rare smiles, “yes, I am.

“After they went broke on the new philosophy, they came back for some of that good old time religion.”

Not long ago Rogers attended a breakfast for the symphony’s executive committee, and word has it he even gave some money.

Cast of Characters



Ralph Rogers

“I shouldn’t have issued an ultimatum I was obligated to go through with. If 1 hadn’t, I’d have stayed with the symphony and the orchestra would be much better off today.”

Rogers, a Boston transplant turned Dallas businessman, headed the DSO for eight years. He resigned as board chairman in 1970. His fiscal philosophy has been imposed on the symphony again, a philosophy the musicians call “Rogers Revenge.”



Dallas Citizens Council

Synonymous with “oligarchs” and “downtown business establishment.” Composed of business chief executives. Very little happens in Dallas civic life involving big money without a cue from the Council.



Jim Keay

“We had two reasons for cutting off the loan. One was to underscore the seriousness of the symphony’s situation and the other was to make it clear to symphony trustees that they must do something toward reaching a financial solution to the orchestra’s problems.”

Board Chairman of Republic National Bank. He made the decision to cut off the DSO loan, resulting in last spring’s suspension. Also helped raise funds last summer.



Symphony Association

Composed of some 4.000 individuals contributing $25 or more to the symphony. Governed by a 100-member board of trustees. Real power, however, is in the association’s 12-member executive committee.



Henry Miller

“Looking at today’s board, you’d be hard pressed to find half a dozen names of like prestige.”

Miller learned last spring that few of his trustees could afford to contribute as much as $2,500. Miller, chairman of Henry S. Miller Companies, is president of the symphony association. He is also big in the Civic Opera and Civic Ballet.



John Ardoin

“I started trying to explain my position to them about 9:30, and by midnight, had gotten nowhere. You’d have thought I was speaking Italian.”

Music critic of The Dallas Morning News. Has written many unfavorable articles about the symphony and its leadership.



Anshel Brusilow

Brusilow had heated exchanges with News amusements editor Bill Payne. Brusilow said: “And keep your boy Ardoin off my back.” Later, Brusilow said: “I think that was the beginning of the end for me.”

Brusilow was hired as DSO conductor in the fall of 1970. Two years later he was notified his contract would not be renewed.



Louis Lane

“Your life here is too easy. The city is clean, there’s lots to do and the weather is nice. In Cleveland, the orchestra is something that makes the city a little less unpleasant. . .”

Current principal guest conductor and artistic advisor for DSO. His contract expires in May, 1975. Formerly resident conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra.



Bob Glaze

“Bob Glaze isn’t a chief executive, but he does seem to have the business community’s approval.”

Glaze is treasurer of the Trammell Crow Investment Company and currently is symphony board chairman.



Max Rudolph

“Rudolph became disgusted after a year when he couldn’t see or even talk to the withdrawn business community, much less see money being raised.”

Resigned in January. 1974, after 6ne year as artistic advisor to the symphony. Formerly conductor of the Metropolitan Opera and musical director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

Key Dates



1967

June-$3.1 million in local funds raised to match (and exceed) $2 million Ford Foundation grant.



1970

October- Cool temperatures make symphony members refuse to play at Cotton Bowl spectacular. Action chills DSO board chairman Ralph Rogers and he resigns.



1972

March – DSO executive committee votes non-renewal of conductor Brusilow’s contract; later rescinds its action.



July – Dallas County Campaign Screening Committee balks at DSO’s $750,000 fund raising request.



September- Symphony tours Central and South America.



November- Executive committee again votes to not renew Brusilow’s contract. This time the action is ratified.



1973

April – Dallas Citizens Council committee lays down conditions the symphony must meet before public fund drive may be held.



December- Screening committee approves fund drive.



1974

January – Symphony secretly tours Southeast United States.



February- Republic Bank prepares to cut off symphony loan.



March – Republic terminates loan. Symphony association executive committee and musicians agree season must be suspended.



June – June development drive begins. Finally reaches its $500,000 goal in August.



August – Independent arbitrator rules symphony must pay summer wages to musicians.

Ardoin Power

The symphony, like many other institutions in Dallas, has for the most part been handled with kid gloves by the local press. There is, however, one very notable exception: The Dallas Morning News’ critic John Ardoin.

Ardoin’s critical salvos during the Brusilow tenure enraged the symphony’s executive committee so much that half a dozen committee members marched down to the News to see publisher Joe Dealey. Dealey listened patiently, but did nothing.

Recently, Ardoin again became the center of attention when symphony president Henry Miller flaunted a symphony association public opinion poll which he claimed proved Ardoin has no real influence on the reading public’s feeling about the symphony.

But several weeks and several stinging Ardoin articles later, Miller and the executive committee threw a dinner party for their antagonist clearly in the hope of reshaping his thinking. There was a communications problem.

“I started trying to explain my position to them about 9:30 and by midnight had gotten nowhere,” Ardoin said. “You’d have thought I was speaking Italian.”

Fact is, whatever Ardoin’s actual influence is, the symphony poll did show he is the music critic in Dallas. His name is recognized by the Park Cities-North Dallas symphony goers, particularly the wealthier ones. By contrast, The Dallas Times Herald’s critic, Olin Chism, has virtually no name recognition among these people, according to the poll.

Some are convinced Ardoin does have plenty of clout, not the least of whom is Anshel Brusilow. Brusilow once had a heated exchange with News amusements editor Bill Payne. The exchange ended with, “And keep your boy Ardoin off my back.” Said Brusilow in retrospect, “I think that was the beginning of the end for me.”

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