Joseph Horovitz
Biography
Joseph Horovitz studied composition with Gordon Jacob at the Royal College of Music, London where he won the Farrar Prize. He later studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Joseph's first post was as music director of the Bristol Old Vic Company (1950-51). He later came to London during the Festival of Britain to conduct various ballet companies including the Ballets Russes. From 1952-63 he was associate director of the Intimate Opera Company and in 1956 joined the music staff of Glyndebourne Opera.
In 1959 Joseph received the Commonwealth Medal for Composition and then in 1961 a Leverhulme Research Award. He has won two Ivor Novello Awards for Captain Noah and his Floating Zoo (Best British Music for Children 1975) and "Lillie" (Best TV Music 1978). In 1990 he received a British Academy of Composers and Songwriters Gold Badge. In 1996 he was awarded the Gold Order of Merit of the City of Vienna, his place of birth, and in 2002 he received the Nino Rota Prize in Italy for an outstanding international musical career. In 2007 he received the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art First Class and honorary membership of the Austrian Composers’ Society. The Worshipful Company of Musicians Awarded him the Cobbett Medal in 2008 for services to chamber music.
Joseph is a Fellow of the Royal College of Music, where he has been a professor of composition since 1961. He has been a council member of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain since 1970, served on the executive of the Performing Rights Society from 1969-96, and from 1981-89 he was president of the International Council of Composers and Lyricsts (CIAM).
His works include fourteen ballets, two one-act operas, nine concertos, five string quartets, music for orchestra, brass band and wind ensembles, choral works, and music for Son et Lumiere. He has also written over seventy TV scores, including two BBC Shakespeare plays, Agatha Christie series, Fight Against Slavery and Rumpole of the Bailey.