John Joubert

John Joubert was born in Cape Town in 1927 and educated at the Diocesan College in Rondebosch where he came under the guidance of the musical director Claude Brown, whose teaching he regarded as "an indispensable foundation to my subsequent musical career". 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. The greatest influence on his composition, however, was William Henry Bell, an English-born composer who taught Joubert privately following his graduation from the South African College of Music in 1944.

The following year, Joubert was awarded a Performing Right Society Scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he studied with Theodore Holland, Howard Ferguson and Alan Bush. He was recipient of a Royal Philharmonic Prize in 1949, took up a music lectureship at Hull University in 1950 and in 1952 won the Novello Anthem Competition with his O Lorde, the maker of al thing. In 1962 he was appointed Senior Lecturer and subsequently Reader in Music at the University of Birmingham and, following early retirement, was appointed Senior Research Fellow at Birmingham in 1997. He is also an honorary Doctor of Music at Durham University. He has received commissions from Three Choirs and Birmingham Triennial Festivals, from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Society and the BBC.

Among his many, often large scale works, are two symphonies, concertos for violin, piano and bassoon, seven operas, many large scale choral works, and a number of instrumental and small ensemble and vocal pieces. His instinctive feel for literature is clearly evident in his operas, among which are included Silas Marner (1961) (after the novel by George Eliot) and Under Western Eyes (1968) (after the novel by Conrad). John Joubert's love of literature may also be seen in the smaller settings of poets such as Lawrence (The Instant Moment, 1986), Hardy (South of the Line 1985) and Mandelstam (Tristia, 1987). He is most widely known and appreciated for his prodigious gifts as a composer of short choral works, mostly to liturgical or other Christian texts, with or without instrumental accompaniment. In 1997 Joubert completed the Rochester Triptych, a setting for SATB and orchestra of text by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-80). This triptych was first performed in 1997 at Hereford Cathedral by the Three Choirs Festival Chorus and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Brigs.

Among the small scale choral works in this composer's catalogue are the world famous carols Torches (1951) and There is no rose (1954), as well as the more sustained Rorate coeli (1985). In all of these, mastery of materials is put to the creation of work that is of deceptive simplicity.

Among John Joubert's most important recent works is his oratorio On Wings of Faith. Commissioned by Ex-Cathedra for the Birmingham Millennium Festival, this work was first performed by Ex-Cathedra, with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, conducted by Jeffrey Skidmore, in Birmingham Cathedral in March 2000.

Commissions and Performances
Oboe Concerto - 2007
12 July 2007, Lichfield Festival (world premiere)
18 March 2008, Town Hall, Birmingham
19 March 2008, Civic Hall, Stratford-upon-Avon

Oboe Concerto
My Oboe Concerto was commissioned by Orchestra of the Swan and completed last year. The first movement veers between two moods, one rather agitated and the other more relaxed and lyrical. The three-note motif with which the movement begins dominates the opening section while the slower music which follows provides both a contrast to what has gone before and the oboe with a chance to demonstrate its more expressive potential.

The agitated music of the opening returns, this time extended to a climatic point which then subsides and gives way to a return to the lyricism of the second theme to bring the movement to a peaceful close.

The second movement is a scherzo in 6/8 time with the strings playing muted throughout. After the opening chords over a drum-beat rhythm in the basses, the oboe enters with an extended melody I continuous triplet quavers with off-beat accents, soon picked up by a solo violin which for a time enters into dialogue with it. The opening chords with their "drum-beat" rhythm return and introduce a new, more sustained melody on the oboe against which the strings keep up the triplet quaver movement before taking up their share of the new material. This leads back to a partial recapitulation of the first section which resumes its unbroken momentum to bring the movement to its climatic end.

The third movement - the most extended of the three - is a set of variations over a 17 bar ground, first announced by cellos and basses and based on the three-notes motif first heard at the very beginning o the whole work. Four variations follow in which the oboe participates with increasingly florid figuration. The fifth variation is for strings alone, and the seventh, in the manner of cadenza, is for unaccompanied oboe. The eight and last variation is marked "Calmo e Solenne" and raises the ground from its position as the lowest voice in the texture to become the uppermost. This provides the work as a whole with an almost liturgical epilogue and the three-note motif with its final apotheosis.
John Joubert