David Dubery

Summary

‘I don't believe that any composer has the right to be liked, or even performed.’

I first met David Dubery at the opening event of a music festival in October 2011 and was immediately struck by his friendliness, his inquisitiveness about unfamiliar music and his quiet seriousness of mind. I knew none of his own works except for Mrs Harris in Paris but over the following few days there were many opportunities to chat, and our conversations convinced me that he had much to contribute to this book.

One reason is that his career as a composer isn't untypical of what might be called a ‘lesser-known’ of contemporary British music. He has spent much of his working life performing and teaching a wide variety of other people's music and has written his own pieces as time has allowed. And because he wants them to be performed and heard he concentrates on vocal and chamber music – what he knows from the inside, as it were, through his experience as a pianist, accompanist and vocal coach. He might therefore be described as a musical miniaturist, although there's no reason to suppose that he's less ambitious than his composing colleagues.

However, a creative artist's success is dependent on a number of factors that include professional opportunity and position, and financial stability. Also, perhaps, temperament. Most composers are by nature thin-skinned but are required to develop thick skins and to accept that music is to some extent a product that has to be promoted in a crowded marketplace. Some achieve the necessary balance between self-doubt and self-confidence – between introversion and extroversion, perhaps – more successfully than others, and determination doesn't always translate into the single-minded drive necessary for survival at the most conspicuous level of music-making.

Dubery is a softly spoken, self-effacing person who, having worked for many years with singers and instrumentalists, knows all about the egos, insecurities and rivalries within his profession and has sometimes been on the receiving end of them. By way of consolation, he observes that, although the most famous British composers are known of, their music isn't widely performed or known. In which case, he suggested to me, ‘lesser-knowns’ like him are probably no worse off for not having obvious success.