Peart, Donald Richard

Born: 9 January 1909 at Fovant, Wiltshire, England, son of Herbert Edward Peart, artist, and his wife Ada Dorothy, née Cheesman.
Died: 26 November 1981
Married: Ellen Lilian Germon on 24 January 1935. They had a son and a daughter.

Education:
After attending Cheltenham College, studied philosophy, politics and economics and music at Queen's College, Oxford (BA, 1931; B.Mus., 1944; MA, 1952). His dissertation on music for the viol and violin in seventeenth-century England earned him Oxford's John Lowell Osgood memorial prize in 1932.
He furthered his studies at the Royal College of Music (ARCM, 1935), where he received composition instruction from R. O. Morris and Ralph Vaughan Williams. He studied violin with Arthur Bent, viola with Ernest Tomlinson and conducting with Constant Lambert and W. H. Reed. Established the Oxford Consort of Viols with Robert Donington and Richard Nicholson.

Career:
1935 to 1939 Librarian, Royal College of Music; In 1937, having studied viola da gamba (1928-30) with Arnold Dolmetsch and Marco Pallis, he was appointed to the London Philharmonic Orchestra as a violist.
1939 to May 1946 Army (emergency commission in the Gloucestershire Regiment). Promoted to lieutenant on 9 September 1941, he became a temporary captain on 16 January 1944. He was seconded to the Royal West African Frontier Force, serving in Ghana and Nigeria in 1942-44. In Burma and India he was deployed with the 81st (West Africa) Division in 1944-46, before being released to the Unemployed List. );
Worked for the trustees of Dartington Hall, Totnes, South Devon on a survey of current conditions in the world of music in England and Wales
3 March 1948 to 31 December 1974 Foundation Professor of Music, University of Sydney
1950 - founded the Pro Musica Society;
An honorary fellow of the Royal College of Music, London (1957), he was awarded the first honorary doctorate of music by the University of Sydney (1980).
1974 Retired; Emeritus Professor

Publications:
John Jenkins; transcribed and edited by Donald Peart, Consort music of six parts [music], Stainer and Bell for the Musica Britannica Trust, London, 1977

Sources: Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 18, (MUP) 2012, SMH 4 Dec 1974