Desmond John Dupré (19 December 1916,

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

– 16 August 1974,

Tonbridge Tonbridge ( ) is a market town in Kent, England, on the River Medway, north of Royal Tunbridge Wells, south west of Maidstone and south east of London. In the administrative borough of Tonbridge and Malling, it had an estimated populat ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

) was an English

lutenist A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted. More specifically, the term "lute" can re ...

, guitarist,

gambist The viol (), viola da gamba (), or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bow (music), bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments, stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and Tuning mechanisms for stringed instruments, pegboxes where ...

and a prominent figure in the 20th century revival of early music. He was known particularly for his recordings on lute and

viola da gamba The viol (), viola da gamba (), or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitch ...

, notably with

counter-tenor A countertenor (also contra tenor) is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range is equivalent to that of the female contralto or mezzo-soprano voice types, generally extending from around G3 to D5 or E5, although a sopranist (a ...

Alfred Deller Alfred George Deller, CBE (31 May 1912 – 16 July 1979), was an English singer and one of the main figures in popularising the return of the countertenor voice in Renaissance and Baroque music during the 20th century. He is sometimes referr ...

Early life

Desmond Dupré was the third child of Frederick Harold Dupré, an

analytical chemist Analytical chemistry studies and uses instruments and methods to separate, identify, and quantify matter. In practice, separation, identification or quantification may constitute the entire analysis or be combined with another method. Separati ...

, and Ruth Clarkson, a violinist. Dupré was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, London and studied chemistry at Oxford University in 1936, graduating with a first in chemistry in 1940. He went on to study music at the

Royal College of Music The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the undergraduate to the doctoral level in all aspects of Western Music including performanc ...

from 1946, studying

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a bowed (sometimes plucked and occasionally hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually tuned in perfect fifths: from low to high, C2, G ...

with

Ivor James Ivor James CBE (1882–1963) Percy A. Scholes. "James, Ivor". ''Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music''. Oxford University Press, 1964. was a British cellist. He taught for many years at the Royal College of Music; among his pupils were those who bec ...

and harmony with

Herbert Howells Herbert Norman Howells (17 October 1892 – 23 February 1983) was an English composer, organist, and teacher, most famous for his large output of Anglican church music. Life Background and early education Howells was born in Lydney, Gloucest ...

. He became interested in the

viol The viol (), viola da gamba (), or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitc ...

, and taught himself this instrument.

Career

His first professional engagements were as a guitarist and as a cellist with the Boyd Neel Orchestra. He formed a duo with Alfred Deller in 1948. accessed via JSTOR (subscription required). In 1950,

HMV Sunrise Records and Entertainment, trading as HMV (for His Master's Voice), is a British music and entertainment retailer, currently operating exclusively in the United Kingdom. The first HMV-branded store was opened by the Gramophone Company ...

released the first of his many recordings with Deller. In this one he accompanied him on the guitar. Like Deller, Dupré was much interested in a more authentic style of performance. Instead of continuing to play lute repertoire on the guitar, he taught himself the lute, and his subsequent performances with Deller were predominantly on that instrument, including his 1951

Wigmore Hall Wigmore Hall is a concert hall located at 36 Wigmore Street, London. Originally called Bechstein Hall, it specialises in performances of chamber music, early music, vocal music and song recitals. It is widely regarded as one of the world's leadi ...

debut. He was a regular performer with many leading early music groups, including the Julian Bream Consort, the Jacobean Consort of Viols, and Musica Reservata. He recorded

Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the ''Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard wor ...

's sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord with

Thurston Dart 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 ...

, and Dart reconstructed a Handel concerto for lute and harp, which Dupré premiered.Robert Adelson, Allmusic Dupré was the first president of the Lute Society, a post he held from 1956 to 1973.

Partial discography

*Bach – The Three Viola da Gamba Sonatas (L'Oiseau-Lyre LP OLS 157, 1958)

References

1916 births 1974 deaths English lutenists English viol players Classical accompanists Alumni of St John's College, Oxford People from Tonbridge Musicians from Kent 20th-century classical musicians 20th-century English musicians 20th-century classical pianists {{string-musician-stub