Joseph Horovitz composes concertos and ballets, operas and chamber music, yet he’s best known for Rumpole of the Bailey, and Captain Noah and his Floating Zoo. The last of his five string quartets, dating from 1969, one of his finest works, uses gritty dissonance seemingly to recall the harsh experiences of his earlier life, with anguish forcefully invoked by insistent repetitions of Viennese waltz motifs. The disquiet alternates with wistful passages, however, and the quartet achieves a peaceful resolution on to a final consonance.

The commitment and enthusiasm of the children was memorable, as was the sight of their parents in the audience” My poem, ‘Noah’s Notes (Preliminary)’, imagines Noah on duty by the Ark’s door as the animals enter. He makes notes about each of the creatures. His notes are preliminary, however. How much more time will he spend, I wonder, studying (like a biblical David Attenborough) the lifestyle of the creatures penned in the Ark as it sails along the flood? Snowman, Daniel. "The Hitler Emigrés". www.penguin.co.uk. Archived from the original on 22 February 2020 . Retrieved 23 February 2020. 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. 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.Horrortorio (words by Alistair Sampson from a scenario by Maurice Richardson) for soloists, chorus and orchestra. It was performed at the Hoffnung Astronautical Musical Festival Captain Noah and His Floating Zoo has become a favourite among sacred and secular institutions alike. Relatively short (about twenty-six minutes) and intended for children, the work has been successfully adapted for adult performers, with the aforementioned recording by The King’s Singers being one such example.

The children's " pop cantata" Captain Noah and His Floating Zoo (1970) was his biggest popular success. [19] The libretto by Michael Flanders is an adaptation of the Biblical tale of Noah found in Genesis chapters 6–9. It is one of a series of similar cantatas commissioned for school use by the publishers Novello, including The Daniel Jazz (1963) by Herbert Chappell, Jonah-Man Jazz (1966) by Michael Hurd and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat by Andrew Lloyd Webber (1968). The piece was first recorded by the Kings Singers in 1972 on an Argo LP, [20] and a new orchestral version by the composer was conducted by John Wilson in 2018. [12] An environmental cantata, Summer Sunday, followed in 1975, commissioned for the Cookham Festival. [21] His music for television included Lillie, Rumpole of the Bailey, The Search for the Nile, The Fight Against Slavery, Wessex Tales and Partners in Crime.Captain Noah and His Floating Zoo was conceived as an accommodating work. In the Preface to the Novello edition the authors indicate that they "hope it will be useful wherever and whenever groups of singers and musicians need a work of some length to perform together, and that they will arrange, divide and adapt it (within reason) as best suits their available talent and the occasion." [1] After reading music and modern languages at Oxford he studied with Gordon Jacob at the Royal College of Music and for a year with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.

Captain Noah and His Floating Zoo (1970) is a children's cantata composed in a popular style for unison or two-part voices and piano, with optional bass and drums. The libretto by Michael Flanders is an adaptation of the Biblical tale of Noah found in Genesis chapters 6–9. It is one of a series of " pop cantatas" commissioned for school use by Novello, including The Daniel Jazz (1963) by Herbert Chappell, Jonah-Man Jazz (1966) by Michael Hurd and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat by Andrew Lloyd Webber (1968). This 15-minute work takes the listener from melodies of prewar Vienna, which the composer, dedicatee and performers would have known, to a distorted version of Horst Wessel Lied, the Nazi anthem that ended their childhoods. The composer once said that if all his works were thrown in a river, this was the one he would retrieve. In the 1980s he composed music for the TV series Agatha Christie’s Partners in Crime and A Dorothy L Sayers Mystery.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.

Horovitz married Anna Landau in 1956, shortly after coaching at the bi-centenary celebration for Mozart and Glyndeborne. They honeymooned in Majorca, staying in Paguera and visiting Valldemossa. He later used these two names for two clarinet pieces, based on Spanish folk-tunes he had heard there. He was Professor of Composition at the Royal College of Music from 1961, and a Council Member of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain from 1970. [7] Between 1969 and 1996 he belonged to the board of the Performing Rights Society. An energetic, enthusiastic and erudite man, the sprightly Horovitz invariably showed genuine yet modest delight when his works produced a positive reaction. “If people find, for instance, three minutes of a piece of music of mine which they’d like to hear again, that’s a wonderful thing,” he said.The words by Michael Flanders (of Flanders and Swann) are brilliantly set to music by the composer Joseph Horovitz, who honoured us with his presence in the audience. Captain Noah was recorded by The King’s Singers ( EMI 1972, reissued Dutton Vocalion 2005 as CDLF8120). One of the ensemble's earliest recordings, the performance features Joseph Horovitz at the piano. The work was also commercially recorded as an animated version intended for television broadcast (1972; VHS, 1978).