Thurston Dart

His father, Henry Thurston Dart, a merchant's clerk, married his mother, Elizabeth Martha Orf in 1915.

He attended Hampton Grammar School, and sang in the choir at Hampton Court.

There he encountered Edmund Fellowes, who gave him encouragement.

Robert Thurston ("Bob") Dart (3 September 1921 – 6 March 1971), was an English musicologist, conductor and keyboard player.

Along with Nigel Fortune, Oliver Neighbour and Stanley Sadie he was one of Britain's leading musicologists of the post-World War II generation.

Dart was born on 3 September 1921 in Surbiton, then part of Surrey.

A student at the Royal College of Music in London 1938–9, Dart went on to mathematics at University College, Exeter, being awarded an external BA degree from the University of London in 1942, and in the same year qualified with ARCM status.

Dart was injured in a plane crash in Calais in November 1944, and while convalescing from his injuries at a nursing home in Swanley, he first met Neville Marriner.

He then served as a Junior Scientific Officer statistician and researcher in the RAF, working on operational research, to 1945.

He was in the strategic bombing Planning Unit under Air Vice Marshal Basil Embry.

After leaving the RAF, he studied for a year 1945–6 on a grant with the Belgian musicologist Charles Van den Borren.

A further early teacher and influence was Arnold Goldsbrough, a founder of the ensemble that later became the English Chamber Orchestra.

Dart returned to England in 1946 as research assistant to Henry Moule, a music lecturer at the University of Cambridge.

In 1947 he was appointed assistant lecturer in music in the university, subsequently having posts as lecturer (1952) and professor (1962), and was a Fellow of Jesus College.

During this time, Dart was an effective British supporter of early music revival, in part through his influence on those who went on to form such groups as the Early Music Consort of London: he lent its founder David Munrow, then reading English at Pembroke College, a crumhorn.

He taught conductor/musicologist Christopher Hogwood of the Academy of Ancient Music.

He taught the conductor John Eliot Gardiner, after Gardiner had left Cambridge, who was also studying with George Hurst.

Philip Brett has been described as "Dart's star pupil".

He worked as an undergraduate on the music manuscripts in the collection of Edward Paston, providing provenances and attributions of some pieces to William Byrd.

Dart involved him in part of his extensive editorial work of revision of books by Edmund Fellowes.

During the 1950s Dart participated in annual concerts featuring four harpsichordists, the three others being George Malcolm, Denis Vaughan and Eileen Joyce.

Ultimately Valda Aveling replaced Joyce.

Their instruments at this point were modern.

Dart and Malcolm were later among those trying replica period harpsichords.

He performed with the Boyd Neel Orchestra, and when in 1955 Neel moved to Canada, he became its artistic director.

The ensemble, renamed Philomusica of London, performed works from Dart's own editions.

Among the early historically informed recordings of the Brandenburg Concertos were those Dart made with the Philomusica of London (1958–9), with a single instrument assigned to each part.

He later worked with Neville Marriner on a recording of the Brandenburg Concertos and the four Orchestral Suites.

For the instrumentation of the fourth concerto, he had argued that the enigmatic instruction fiauti d'echo written by Bach meant a type of flageolet, used to train caged birds to sing.

This interpretation was contentious.

The Marriner-Dart recording used sopranino recorders.

Nicolaus Harnoncourt has used the less unorthodox treble recorder in F4.

He resigned his post with it in 1959.

From 1964 until his death he was King Edward Professor of Music at the University of London, based at King's College London.

In 1964 Dart was appointed King Edward Professor of Music at the University of London, based at King's College London.

According to Denis Arnold, his reason for leaving Cambridge was the conservatism in its approach to music education.

Among his students there was Peter Holman.

Michael Nyman, another of his students at King's, wrote in 1972 that Dart "finally realised his vision of a musical education freed from the pointless strangulation of a system still obsessed with harmony and counterpoint."

As a versatile historical performer, Dart was a successor in the United Kingdom to Arnold Dolmetsch.

A continuo player, he made numerous appearances on the harpsichord; he was also a conductor.