Thurston Dart began his musical career as a chorister at the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court, while he was a pupil at the nearby Hampton Grammar School. During 1938 and 1939 he studied at the Royal College of Music, followed by mathematics at University College, Exeter, where he gained his degree in 1942. Having served with the Royal Air Force during World War II, he afterwards studied in Belgium with the musicologist and expert on English keyboard music Charles van Borren. On his return to England in 1946 he began to play the harpsichord professionally and in the following year he became an assistant lecturer in music at Cambridge University.
Henceforth Dart was active as an academic, writer and performer. Between 1947 and 1954 he was editor of the Journal of the Galpin Society, which had been formed in October 1946 for the publication of original research into the history, construction, development and use of musical instruments. Its name commemorates the pioneer work of Canon Francis W. Galpin (1858–1945) who had spent a lifetime in the practical study of old instruments, both collecting them and recording their history. From 1950 to 1965 Dart was the secretary of Musica Britannica, founded as a national record of the British contribution to music, and remained a powerful force with this edition until his death. He was elected to the Council of the Royal Musical Association in 1952 and went on to join the editorial committee of the Purcell Society. In addition to his frequent concert appearances playing the harpsichord, clavichord and organ, he was closely associated from 1948 to 1955 with the Boyd Neel Orchestra as its continuo player. In 1950 at the same time as he was making his first records with the Jacobean Ensemble for the Argo label, he was also beginning to broadcast regularly as a musical commentator with the Third Programme of the BBC.
Dart also began to work for the specialised record and music publishing company, Editions de l’Oiseau-Lyre, founded and run by the Australian heiress Louise Hanson-Dyer; he advised the company on repertoire and performing editions, as well as recording extensively for it himself. Having been appointed as a full-time lecturer at Cambridge in 1952, he became a Fellow of Jesus College the following year and between 1962 and 1964 he held the post of Professor of Music at the university. In 1955 he became the artistic director of the Philomusica of London, which had been formed out of the Boyd Neel Orchestra and with which he worked closely until 1959, when ill-health compelled him to reduce his activities. Following his time at Cambridge, in 1964 he accepted the newly-created post of King Edward Professor of Music at London University and had a major impact upon academic music life in London, creating a teaching faculty at King’s College and revising the syllabus for music degrees from the university.
Thurston Dart died aged less than fifty years old, but he had already made a huge contribution to English musical culture. Arguably he was the father of the ‘period performance’ movement through his emphasis upon the informed interpretation of the composer’s original scores, which was demonstrated through his own rigorous and stimulating musicianship in performance. He was a man of great knowledge, with his own collection of musical instruments and an extensive library that included many early printed editions and manuscripts. A stimulating teacher and lecturer, he was always prepared to offer support and advice to students. His book The Interpretation of Music, first published in 1954, exerted an immense influence upon music students, and remains significant.
The repertoire of Dart’s numerous recordings reflected his own personal tastes and interests. His ideas concerning the interpretation of orchestral music were clearly put forward in his recordings of the Brandenburg Concertos with the Philomusica of London for l’Oiseau-Lyre in 1959. These were notable for the energy of the performance and the attention to historical detail. Other recordings of repertoire from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries included Handel’s Water Music and serenades by Mozart, both with the Philomusica, and music by Scarlatti, Geminiani and Corelli with the Boyd Neel Orchestra. As a keyboard player Dart recorded a vast amount of music, including especially-praised recordings of the French Suites of J. S. Bach, and pieces by Froberger, Purcell and Croft. The rise in the popularity of period performance recordings has relegated virtually all of Dart’s orchestral recordings to the archives, yet they contain music-making that retains a strong sense of individual character, reflecting that of Dart himself.
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