John Joubert (composer)

John Pierre Herman Joubert ( ; 20 March 1927 – 7 January 2019) was a British composer of South African birth, particularly of choral works. He lived in Moseley, a suburb of Birmingham, England, for over 50 years. ; also published as . A music academic in the universities of Hull and Birmingham for 36 years, Joubert took early retirement in 1986 to concentrate on composing and remained active into his eighties. Though perhaps best known for his choral music, particularly the carols ''Torches'' and ''There is No Rose of Such Virtue'' and the anthem ''O Lorde, the Maker of Al Thing'', Joubert composed over 160 works including three symphonies, four concertos and seven operas.

Early life and education

Joubert was born on 20 March 1927 in Cape Town, South Africa. His ancestors on his father's side were Huguenots, French Protestants from Provence who settled at the Cape in 1688. His mother's ancestry was Dutch.Programme for Ex Cathedra's performance of John Joubert's ''Wings of Faith'' at The Oratory, Birmingham, on 22 March 2007. Joubert was educated at Diocesan College in Rondebosch, South Africa, which was founded by the Anglican Church and maintained a high standard of music-making. He originally hoped to become a painter, and did a fair amount of art at school. However, at about the age of 15 years, he gradually became interested in music, though as a composer rather than a performer. "It was always going to be something creative. Oddly enough, the visual arts haven't been as great a stimulus as literature. I was also interested in writing. In fact, I was bored by everything at school except writing, art and music!" In school, he came under the guidance of the musical director Claude Brown, whose teaching he regarded as "an indispensable foundation to my subsequent musical career". According to Joubert, " rough Brown, I learned all the Elgar choral works even before I heard them properly in full orchestral performance. Not only that idiom, but the idiom of Anglican church music generally. Parry and Stanford, and all the usual blokes." Through his teacher's encouragement, Joubert was able to participate in choral performances with the Cape Town Municipal Orchestra under William J. Pickerill, and subsequently to hear his works featured in performance.

After graduating from the South African College of Music in 1944 he began studying musical composition privately with William Henry Bell, an Englishman well known locally as a composer of distinction. Bell exerted the greatest influence on his composition. In 1946 he was awarded a Performing Right Society Scholarship in composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Here, his principal teachers were Theodore Holland, Howard Ferguson and Alan Bush. During his four years at the Academy he won a number of prizes for composition, notably the Frederick Corder prize and the 1949 Royal Philharmonic Society prize...

Professional career

In 1950 Joubert was appointed to a lectureship in music at the University of Hull, having graduated in the same year with a Bachelor of Music (B.Mus.) degree from the University of Durham. His works soon began to be performed and to attract favourable attention. His carol ''Torches'' ( Op. 7a, 1951) (written for his wife Mary's pupils and based on a Galician (Eastern Europe) carol, it was published in 1961 in the first volume of '' Carols for Choirs'') and the anthem ''O Lorde, the Maker of Al Thing'' (Op. 7b, 1952) (which won the 1952 Novello Anthem Competition), achieved almost instant popularity. Concerning ''Torches'', Joubert recalled, "I've even had carol-singers come to the door and singing it, without knowing the composer lives inside." Together with the carol ''There is No Rose of Such Virtue'' (Op. 14, 1954), the three choral works have become classics of the Anglican repertoire. Works in other genres followed, mostly as the result of commissions from institutions such as the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Birmingham Festival Choral Society (named for the Birmingham Triennial Festival, the Royal Philharmonic Society and the BBC
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