Margaret Petty

Dr. Margaret Petty, as cello teacher and orchestral coach, strives to help students develop technique, expressivity, and freedom to better use the full compass of their gifts. Her solo performances include Bloch’s Schelomo, Haydn D Major and Boccherini B-flat concertos, numerous chamber works, and original compositions for cello. She plays with the Salisbury Symphony and is principal cellist of the High Point University/Community Orchestra and the Danville Symphony.  

Her cello studies, begun through public school music, continued with Marijane Siegal, Allen Harris, and Leslies Parnas at Boston University. After earning a B.Mus.Ed. at Wheaton College (IL), she taught middle- and high school orchestra in Penfield New York, then completed an M.M. in cello performance and doctoral studies in composition at Boston University. She earned a Diplôme d’études approfondies (D.E.A.) and a Ph.D. in musicology at the Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne, with an 1,100-page thesis on twentieth-century French-language choral music inspired by Biblical texts. 

In France, where Dr. Petty resided for thirty years, she taught cello, played in chamber and orchestral groups, and taught music theory and hymnology at the Institut Biblique Européen.  The numerous choral groups she directed (Chantilly, Paris, Alsace) performed in French-speaking countries. She was member of the committee that produced the hymnal Alléluia (2005) for French-speaking Europe, and contributed musicological articles to European publications. Her compositions include choral, chamber, orchestral, and cello music.  She and her husband live in Greensboro.