Composers
John Joubert
© Graham Boulton
Born: 1927
Brief Biography: John Joubert is one of the most respected and distinguished of senior British composers. Born in Cape Town in 1927 he won a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music in 1946 and has lived and worked in England ever since. Joubert is perhaps best known for his choral music - O Lord the maker of al thing, Torches and There is no rose have featured in the popular mainstream repertory for many years. He has also written a large body of chamber music, symphonic works and operas commissioned by among others the Royal Philharmonic Society, Three Choirs Festival and the BBC. His eightieth birthday in 2007 was celebrated with the ‘Joubertiade’, a nationwide and year long series of concerts and events and the release of four new CDs. He will be Composer in Residence at the 2010 Three Choirs Festival, which will include the premiere of An English Requiem.For a complete biography, click here.
Key Works:- Symphony No 1
(1955) - Pro Pace Motets
(1969; unaccompanied chorus) - Under Western Eyes (1968; opera)
- String Quartet No 2 (1977)
- South of the Line (1985; chorus, two pianos, percussion)
- Wings of Faith (2007; chorus, chamber orchestra)
| Career Highlights::- 1949 Royal Philharmonic Society Prize for Composition
- 1970 Conducts LPO in Second Symphony at Royal Festival Hall
- 1986 BBC commissions String Quartet No 3
- 1990 Honorary Doctorate from Durham University
- 2000 Novello publishes single composer volume of Carols and Anthems, including There is no rose, O Lorde, the maker of al thing
- 2007 ’Joubertiade’ 80th birthday concerts, broadcasts and commissions
- 2007 Honorary Doctorate from Birmingham University
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Full Biography:
John Joubert was born in Cape Town in 1927. His father was a descendant of Protestant refugees from France who had settled in the Cape – then a Dutch colony – in the seventeenth century. His mother’s forebears were Dutch. Despite this parentage he had the most English of upbringings, the Cape having been ceded to England after the fall of Napoleon. He received his earliest instruction in music at the hands of his mother who was an accomplished pianist, having studied for a time in London with Harriet Cohen.
His schooling took place at an Anglican foundation run on the lines of an English public school. The music master there had been an assistant to Ivor Atkins at Worcester Cathedral. Whilst at school Joubert started composing and was very fortunate to have been able to study composition with WH Bell, a distinguished English composer who had been the Principal of the South African College of Music and a pupil of Frederick Corder, the teacher of Bax, Bantock and Holbrooke. He was also fortunate to be given the opportunity to have his earliest works performed, not only at school but also by the Cape Town Municipal Orchestra.
In 1946 he was awarded a scholarship by the Performing Right Society to the Royal Academy of Music. Here his principal teachers in composition were Theodore Holland and Howard Ferguson, but he also spent a stimulating term with Alan Bush. Whilst still at the Academy he composed his String Quartet No 1 and the Divertimento for Piano Duet, which became his Op 1 and Op 2 respectively. He was awarded both the Frederick Corder and Royal Philharmonic Society prizes for composition.
Having graduated in 1950 with an external BMus degree from Durham University he was appointed later the same year to a lectureship at Hull University, and his music soon began to be widely performed, published and broadcast. Among the more ambitious works of this period were Symphony No 1, the Piano Concerto and the three-act opera Silas Marner. Some of his smaller choral works, notably the carol Torches, became popular and have remained in the repertoire ever since.
He continued his academic career at Birmingham where he was appointed Lecturer, later Senior Lecturer, and eventually Reader in Music, at the University. Commissions continued to come his way, and amongst the works he composed at Birmingham were Symphony No 2, the opera Under Western Eyes and the oratorio The Raising of Lazarus. In the early 1980s he began to feel that the increasing demands of his two professions were becoming too onerous for him and he took early retirement from the University in 1986 in order to devote his time exclusively to composition. In 1991 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in music by Durham University and is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. Since his retirement he has completed, as well as numerous smaller works, two large scale projects: his third three-act opera Jane Eyre, and the full-length oratorio Wings of Faith, which received its first performance in March 2007 as part of the composer’s eightieth birthday celebrations.
External Websites
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