Si monumentum requiris, circumspice.
So reads the epitaph for Sir Christopher Wren in London鈥檚 St. Paul鈥檚 Cathedral, which he designed. 鈥淚f you require a monument, look around you.
The same inscription deserves display in Dallas鈥� , together with an image of the man who did so much to bring one of the city鈥檚 landmarks 鈥� indeed, one of the world鈥檚 finest concert halls 鈥� into being.
, who died Aug. 5 after a long battle with cancer, presided over conceptualizing the building, selecting the architect and acoustical consultant, negotiating land purchases and participation by the city of Dallas and innumerable decisions on the building鈥檚 details and construction.
The 10-year process, detailed in Laurie Shulman鈥檚 book The Meyerson Symphony Center: Building a Dream, was fraught with innumerable challenges and near disasters. Not least of the challenges were egos of and acoustician Russell Johnson, not to mention moneyed civic leaders with their own visions.
For decades, the had played in halls that could hardly have been less acoustically supportive 鈥� mainly the vast Fair Park Music Hall, but also for a few years Southern Methodist University鈥檚 McFarlin Auditorium. Even scheduling dates at the Music Hall was a nightmare. Following a financial collapse in 1974, it was increasingly clear that the orchestra needed a better performance venue.
In 1973, , a new Harvard grad, returned to Dallas to join the company his great-grandfather co-founded. (He served as DallasNews Corporation鈥檚 board chairman, president and CEO, retiring in 2023.)
Six years later, in 1979, Decherd was tapped to chair the DSO board. With interest in a new home for the DSO on many minds, Decherd asked Meyerson, president of Electronic Data Systems, to chair a planning committee.
In a 2018 DSO interview, Meyerson recalled telling Decherd, 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 want me because I鈥檓 not the right kind of person. I鈥檓 semi-bad-tempered. I have a short attention span. I鈥檓 very demanding. I鈥檓 not political, and I couldn鈥檛 fit in.鈥�
That, of course, was exactly why he was the perfect person for the job 鈥� which turned into a lot more work than he expected. He immediately set out to learn as much as he could about concert halls new and old, the great ones and the disasters.
He presided over a large committee to involve many different viewpoints 鈥攁nd potential funders 鈥� and smaller subcommittees to address specific issues. Subcommittees to select and oversee the the architect and acoustical consultant were chaired by, respectively, the late Stanley Marcus and Eugene Bonelli. In a highly unusual move, Pei and Johnson were designated equals in the design process, which led to numerous headbuttings.
The late , former architecture critic of The News, recalled Meyerson describing one of those confrontations: 鈥淚 locked them in a room and knocked their heads together till I got a sound I liked.鈥�
There were endless negotiations with the city, and with owners of decaying commercial properties on what would become the setting for the concert hall 鈥� and, of course, struggles to raise the necessary funds. Books celebrating new buildings are usually all puffery, but Shulman鈥檚 on the Meyerson is a real page-turner of outsized personalities and crises barely averted. Work was going on literally minutes before the doors opened.
In the end, thanks to Meyerson 鈥� and he would be the first to credit the many other people, from civic leaders to construction workers 鈥� Dallas gained an orchestra hall among the finest in the world. Opened in September 1989, it seems as fresh and welcoming and inspiring 鈥� and sonically sumptuous 鈥� as ever.
The choice of Pei was inspired. A devoted music lover, the architect was thrilled to design the only concert hall of his long career. Elegantly finished, its dialogues of angles and curves, never quite what you expect, continue to fascinate. The lobby is vast and welcoming, the concert hall interior articulated in grids of sumptuous makore and mahogany, with backlit onyx punctuations.
Johnson was less well known at the time, but the Meyerson made him an overnight sensation in acoustical design. He and his colleagues gave the hall unprecedented adjustability, from the enormous overhead canopy that can be raised, lowered and angled to reverberance chambers that can be opened and closed behind grilles ringing the room. In normal symphonic settings the hall has a sonic signature unlike any other.
As I wrote recently, 鈥淚 can鈥檛 think of another concert hall that puts orchestral sound so vividly in your face, so deep in your bones, with so rich and spacious an acoustical surround.鈥� Dallas doesn鈥檛 know how lucky it is.
When Meyerson asked his EDS boss, the late , for a lead donation to finish the hall, he expected it to be named for Perot or his family. Perot had a very different demand: that it be named for the man who more than anyone had brought it into being.
鈥淧art of me is embarrassed,鈥� Meyerson said in a 2015 四虎影院 interview. 鈥淚 came from a middle-class family in Fort Worth, and I am the grandson of immigrants. So I basically have lived the American Dream. Even in an American Dream, you don鈥檛 think that your name will be on a symphony hall. So for me it is slightly intimidating and slightly embarrassing. But it is not so embarrassing that I can鈥檛 take joy in it.鈥�
Meyerson鈥檚 service to the DSO included longtime membership on the board and participation in search committees that identified former music directors Andrew Litton and ; he chaired the committee that recommended current music director . A lifelong music lover, he sang in numerous performances of the Dallas Symphony Chorus.
Those of us lucky enough to have known Mort will treasure memories of a smart, no-nonsense guy who cared deeply about the important things in life and did his part to make the world a better place. He wasn鈥檛 a fancy dresser, didn鈥檛 drive fancy cars and lived in an industrial-modern rehab of a power station. He was the real deal.
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