Martin Dalby
Composer noted for his lyricism who was BBC Scotland’s head of music for more than two decades
MARTIN DALBY, who has died aged 76, was head of music at BBC Scotland for more than two decades, overseeing the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and producing programmes that championed musicians from Scotland; he was also a composer, whose steady output of complex but poetic music found an audience in many quarters.
He joined the orchestra in 1971, taking responsibility for programming their concerts, selecting their conductors and soloists, and arranging their visits to the Proms and their first overseas tours. He introduced promising young musicians to radio audiences, finding them time in the BBC’S Glasgow studios and guiding them through the complexities of broadcasting.
He went on to work with the composer John Purser on the magnificent Scotland’s Music,a 30-part radio series for which he won a Sony gold award.
In 1980, when the corporation proposed axing the BBC SSO and five other orchestras, Dalby put his position on the line by campaigning vigorously for its retention. “I was sacked at least twice,” he said.
His tenacity was rewarded, however, when the orchestra was granted a reprieve and he was provided with a rebuilt orchestral studio in Glasgow.
John Martin Dalby was born on April 25 1942 in Aberdeen. His father, John, was the organist of St Machar’s Cathedral and later became music organiser for schools in the northeast of Scotland. According to family folklore, John would use his clarinet to serenade the unborn Martin while still he was still in the womb of his mother Louisa (née Dixon).
Young Martin, who learnt to play viola, would accompany his father to work, recalling sitting beside him at the console “with the full organ and the choir blasting away”, adding that “it sounded thrilling and so exciting”.
He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, studying viola with Frederick Riddle and composition with Herbert Howells. When the father of an angry girlfriend tried to get Dalby kicked out of the RCM for supposedly compromising her honour after she missed the last train home and stayed at his flat, Howells brushed the incident aside, saying: “You’re writing great songs, so you can carry on.”
In 1963 Dalby won the Octavia Prize and, with the assistance of a Scottish Sir James Caird travelling scholarship, took himself by train for two years in Italy, where he played with an orchestra in Naples.
Back in London he joined the BBC. On his first day he spotted the musicologist Hans Keller, who had been on his interview panel, surrounded by papers and scores. “I said, ‘You’re busy, I’ll come back later,’ and he said, ‘No, let’s have a beer’.” Keller gave him useful guidance and introduced him to countless musicians.
After five years he was appointed to a research fellowship in composition at Glasgow University, but was soon invited to join BBC Scotland.
Both during his working life and in retirement Dalby was a prolific composer, writing music for churches, brass bands, orchestras and other forces. His music was essentially lyrical and good-humoured, although critics detected darker, more complex forces at work. His Viola Concerto was heard at the Proms in 1974 performed by Riddle and conducted by Norman del Mar, the first of four outings for his music at the Royal Albert Hall.
Dalby retired from the BBC in 1993. Beyond composing he had an eclectic range of interests including hillwalking, railways, steam engines, birdwatching, literature and flying private aircraft. He was chairman of the Composers’ Guild of Great Britain from 1995 until 1998, and in 1999 he accepted a composition award with a speech about sheep.
In 1984 Martin Dalby married Hilary Belcher, a former violinist who now teaches the Alexander technique. She survives him. There were no children of the marriage.