Robert Thurston Dart (1921-71) was one of the great autodidacts of the 20th century. In the days when opportunities for performance or study of pre-Classical music were rare, he – like so many pioneers – travelled his own idiosyncratic route.

A choirboy at the Chapel Royal, Hampton Court, Dart caught the attention of the redoubtable Edmund H Fellowes, arguably the leading expert on early English choral music of his time. In the 1930s he sang for the BBC’s Children’s Hour broadcasts and later studied with Arnold Goldsborough at the Royal College of Music before reading Mathematics at Exeter University. In 1942 he was called to wartime service with the RAF where, post D-Day, he survived crash-landing in a minefield outside Calais. Recuperating in hospital he met the young violinist Neville Marriner, and one of the key musical partnerships of the early music revival was ignited. Dart left the army on the understanding that he would pursue postgraduate statistical research at Cambridge University but instead travelled to Belgium to study with the Flemmish musicologist Charles Van den Borren. Returning to England with a dazzling keyboard technique and keen research acumen he worked at Cambridge University when he was appointed a Professor in 1962.

It was during the 1950s that Dart performed most widely. A regular broadcaster for the BBC’s Third Programme, with Marriner he both formed the Jacobean Consort and performed in the Boyd Neel Orchestra gaining a reputation as a formidable continuo-player. In 1955, Neel moved to Canada and Dart became Artistic Director. His remodeled ensemble – Philomusica of London – specialized in Baroque repertoire performed from his own editions ‘with the utmost attention to authenticity and sonority’ and he directed from the harpsichord. During this decade Dart also met the Australian patron and publisher Louise Dyer for whom he recorded extensively as a soloist and with his Philomusica on her L’Oiseau-Lyre label. It is due to her unflinching support and enthusiasm that so much of Dart’s work is preserved on disc. In particular his series ‘Masters of Early English Keyboard Music’ established him as a soloist of distinction and an expert interpreter of the works of John Bull but it is as a clavichordist that his exquisite sensitivity to voicing and nuance really shines through, particularly with his album of Froberger (1/62). This was one of Dart’s personal favourites and was recorded on Dart’s own instrument made by Thomas Goff. With the Jacobean Ensemble his recording of Purcell’s Sonatas of Three Parts (Argo, 8/58) is particularly joyful and quick-witted despite an outdated string tone. Throughout his ensemble recordings he is noted for elaborate and ear-catching continuo realisations, a style now suppressed in favour of austerity.

Alongside this busy performing career Dart’s academic star was also ascendant long before his specialism had become established in Britain. He was secretary to Musica Britannica, editing many volumes of early British music; a founding member of the Galpin Society, devoted to the study of old instruments; and a prolific writer. In his book The Interpretation of Music, musicology informed performance as he contemplated original performing styles and conditions for much early music. He was not slow to practise what he preached. For example, he commissioned ‘Corelli bows’ for the Boyd Neel Orchestra and reported to Louise Dyer ‘you have never heard string tone like this before. The clarity of articulation, the sweetness of the sound (so gentle, so un-wiry), the precision of the attack, the elegance – all that one had hoped for from 18th-century music, in fact.’ However, in 1959 Dart resigned from the orchestra citing exhaustion.

During his Cambridge years Dart influenced many important musicians: Christopher Hogwood and David Munrow (whom he famously lent a crumhorn) included. Performing less in the 1960s, Dart devoted himself to education and seized the opportunity to found a new Music Faculty for the University of London, based at King’s College, in 1964, where many more young musicians were drawn to his orbit including Michael Nyman, Davitt Moroney and Sir John Eliot Gardiner.

Always leading by example, Dart’s later research continually questioned established performance norms, especially in Baroque repertoire. Those new violin bows were just the tip of an iceberg, and he might best be remembered today for his work on the roots of the Brandenburg Concertos which he was recording with Marriner in 1971 when admitted to hospital with stomach cancer. His revolutionary editions (re)assigned the flauti d’echo parts to recorders: a charismatic pairing of David Munrow and John Turner.

Sir Neville Marriner best summed up Thurston Dart’s life on BBC radio in 1996 when he reflected: ‘Nowadays he would be considered to be a messiah but in those days he was rather considered to be a troublemaker.’ Indeed, Dart’s work enabled many subsequent developments and his legacy is now with his many distinguished pupils and colleagues who continue to make glorious trouble as they reshape the musical landscape.

Key recording

Froberger Clavichord Music 

Thurston Dart clavichord

(BnF Collection)