Captain Noah and His Floating Zoo

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His Jazz Harpsichord Concerto (1965), using a concertino of amplified harpsichord, drums and bass, was a curiously idiosyncratic work for a professor at the RCM to write in the mid-60s, but its skilful blend of classical and jazz procedures, and its infectious, foot-tapping enthusiasm, give it immense audience appeal. Unlike many of his postwar European contemporaries, Horovitz’s music rarely strayed from the approachable and likeable. In The Hitler Emigrés (2002), Daniel Snowman describes Horovitz joking to the musicologist Hans Keller that Schoenberg “wrote no tunes”, whereupon Keller riposted by whistling one of his hero’s most intractable twelve-tone themes. His more serious religious vocal works included the psalm setting Sing unto the Lord a New Song (1971), which was the first work commissioned from a Jewish composer for the choir of St Paul's Cathedral. The oratorio Samson for voices and brass band followed in 1977, a commission from the National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain.

The work encompasses a number of musical styles including hymnal, samba, jazz and square dance. Keep an ear out for the Edgar Allan Poe reference rapping on the door! The concert was conducted by Philip Scriven and accompanied by a jazz trio consisting of Mark Austin (piano), Dan Swana (bass), Matthew Green (percussion). Joseph Horovitz, composer who brought humour to classical music and was best known for his cantata Captain Noah and His Floating Zoo – obituary". The Telegraph. 11 February 2022. (subscription required) Captain Noah gives the children some rousing choruses to sing, starting with ‘Rain and Rain and Rain’, and ending with a celebration of the end of the flood and God’s promise symbolised by the rainbow in the sky. Members of The Bach Choir had the opportunity to sing several small solo parts as Noah, his wife and sons, and God. Carducci Quartet plays Horovitz, String Quartet No 5". YouTube. Archived from the original on 21 December 2021.The Jubilee Toy Symphony (1977), deploying toy instruments, bird sounds and percussion, was another popular success. Commissioned for the Queen’s silver jubilee, it was given its premiere by a stellar lineup of soloists under Colin Davis at a musical party in aid of the Musicians Benevolent Fund (now Help Musicians) at St James’s Palace, in the presence of the Queen Mother. Horovitz was born in Vienna, Austria, into a Jewish family who emigrated to England in 1938 to escape the Nazis. His father was the publisher Béla Horovitz, the co-founder in 1923, with Ludwig Goldscheider, of Phaidon Press. [3] His sister was the classical music promoter Hannah Horovitz (1936-2010). [4]

Brass ensembles owe Horovitz a debt of gratitude for works such as The Dong with a Luminous Nose (1975) and Bacchus on Blue Ridge (1984), as do the soloists of various concertos including clarinet, oboe, euphonium and harpsichord, the last of those performed with panache at the Proms last year by Mahan Esfahani. Horovitz was born in Vienna in 1926 and emigrated to England in 1938. He studied music at New College, Oxford, with Gordon Jacob at the Royal College of Music where he won the Farrar Prize, and for a further year with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. The Festival of Britain in 1951 brought him to London as conductor of ballet and concerts at the Festival Amphitheatre. He then held positions as conductor to the Ballets Russes, associate director of the Intimate Opera Company, on the music staff at Glyndebourne, and as guest composer at the Tanglewood Festival, USA. Aboard the ark, forty days and forty nights of ceaseless rain takes its toll, but the mood changes both dramatically and musically when the rain finally stops. Spirits begin to lift while the musical accompaniment shifts from percussive, raindrop-like figures to a swaying gesture reminiscent of gentle ocean waves. As the floodwaters subside, Noah enlists a terrified raven to scout for dry land. Following a short, unsuccessful survey of the watery landscape the affrighted raven succumbs to a moment of literary allusion croaking "Nevermore!" (invoking Edgar Allan Poe’s 1845 poem, The Raven).

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He began to achieve critical acclaim in the 1950s for two comic operas, The Dumb Wife, with a libretto by Peter Shaffer after Rabelais, and Gentleman’s Island, and for a series of ballets (he wrote 16 in all) beginning with Les Femmes d’Alger (1952) and continuing with Alice in Wonderland (1953) and Concerto for Dancers (1958). The former were performed by the Intimate Opera Company, for which he acted as a pianist-composer. In 1961 he was appointed professor of composition at the Royal College of Music, becoming a fellow in 1981 and continuing to teach there until shortly before his death. He is survived by his wife, Anna (nee Landau), whom he married in 1956, and their two daughters, Isabel and Sally, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Yet there was more to Horovitz than the tale of a messianic shipbuilder who saved the human race by floating away on a series of somewhat corny chord changes. In his early years he was a renowned composer and conductor of ballet, notably Alice in Wonderland (1953), based on Lewis Carroll’s novel and written for Anton Dolin’s Festival Ballet Company (later English National Ballet) to mark the Coronation.

Joseph journeys through his remarkable life and career in conversation with composer, Debbie Wiseman. Most recently, he celebrated his 95 th birthday with many concerts across Europe to mark the occasion and a notable performance of his Harpsichord Concerto at 2021 BBC Proms. Almost as successful was the Horrortorio, first performed at the Hoffnung astronautical music festival of 1961 at the Royal Festival Hall, and subsequently all over the world. Setting a witty libretto by Alistair Sampson, from a scenario by Maurice Richardson that lampoons Hammer horror films of the period with its storyline populated by Count Dracula, Frankenstein, Moriarty and Fu Manchu, the Horrortorio is a riotous but skilfully crafted pastiche of Handelian oratorio, Gilbert and Sullivan and Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast.

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His first post as music director for the Bristol Old Vic provided both valuable experience – he continued to conduct throughout his life – and a grounding in the popular styles that were to become an intrinsic element in his own idiom.