INTERVIEW with JOHN JOUBERT Inligtingsentrum Vir Suider
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INTERVIEW WITH JOHN JOUBERT BY STEPHANUS MULLER This interview is provided on the express condition that it can only be used for academic purposes with proper acknowledgment of the author and source. Copyright © Stephanus Muller, 2002 http://www.puk.ac.za/music/isam/ Inligtingsentrum vir Information Centre for Suider-Afrikaanse Musiek ISAM Southern African Music Interview with John Joubert at his home in Birmingham on 12 January 2001 BY STEPHANUS MULLER Stephanus Muller: You were born in Cape Town in 1927? John Joubert: Actually Plumstead, which is, as you know, down the suburban line on the way down to Simon’s Town. SM: And your parents, what did they do? JJ: My mother was a piano teacher. She had been trained at the South African College of Music where W.H. Bell was Principal. She was mainly a pianist, but she did a certain amount of acting as well. And she finished her studies in this country under Harriet Cohen, where she became very much enthused by the Russian Ballet because Harriet Cohen was tremendously keen on the Russian Ballet. I am talking of the 1920s now, of course. My mother always had a very keen interest in ballet, particularly the Russian ballet repertoire, so she had quite a collection of recordings and works like Shéhérazade, even an ancient recording of Rite of Spring. So I suppose most of whatever musical talent I have came from her. She was a De Smit. Her forebears came from Holland and settled in the late eighteenth century, I suppose, because her Dutch forebear was actually a naval captain who was fighting the English during the Napoleonic Wars. Holland, as you probably know, was an ally of France. And so he came to the Cape when it was still a Dutch colony as a member of the Dutch navy, but he settled in Cape Town and so that is how her family settled at the Cape. My father’s forebears go back even further than that. They were Huguenots who came to the Cape with the original Huguenots in 1688 and they settled down as you probably know, it’s old South African history. My own particular forebear became a sort of wine grower, I imagine around the Franschoek area, I’m not sure whereabouts it was but that was how it started. He was originally from Provence. My father’s interests were mostly literary, he was a tremendous reader and he was artistic, he was a good draftsman, but he wasn’t in the slightest bit musical. He always used to say that there were two tunes he knew: the one was God Save the King and the other wasn’t. But as far INFORMATION CENTRE FOR SOUTHERN AFRICAN MUSIC 1 Interview with John Joubert as his professional life was concerned, he made his living working as a clerk in an office in Cape Town and went up to the office every morning on the train from Plumstead. When we eventually went to school, my older brother and I went to rather an expensive private school, Diocesan College in Cape Town, paid for, I think, by relatives. I don’t think my father would have been able to pay for both my brother and I to go to school there. But very, very fortunately in my particular case (well I think in both our cases), we were able to go into first the Preparatory School and to the Senior School and get our education there. I say “fortunately for me”, because it was a school with a very good musical tradition and the music master who was there at the time was very much connected with the Anglican choir choral festival Three Choirs-tradition of this country. So I got my first taste of British choral music really through him. And of course like many sort of Cape Afrikaner families we were English-speaking. When the Cape became an English colony, our respective families I suppose simply adopted English as their primary language and continued as sort of honorary English people. This is the whole complexity of the colonial situation, of course. Through family background I became familiar with reading English books, reading English periodicals and so on and as far as my school background is concerned, again it was a very “English style,” I suppose you could say, upbringing. That situation really continued until I left the Diocesan College in 1944. SM: Were you only two children, the two boys? JJ: We were three. My older brother, myself and my younger sister. SM: Where is your sister now? JJ: She is still living in England. She went to Rhodes University and graduated there. SM: You finished your school career in 1944 and in 1946 you came to England. How did that come about? JJ: When I left school, I was already very keen on the idea of becoming a composer. That had all started while I was at school and through my mother knowing W.H. Bell I had composition lessons from him, as indeed did Hubert du Plessis and Stefans Grové. We were all pupils of his round INFORMATION CENTRE FOR SOUTHERN AFRICAN MUSIC 2 Interview with John Joubert about the same time. He was a marvellously inspiring teacher. But my big ambition was to, if possible, come to Europe and I suppose for me Europe meant England as that was the cultural tradition I was brought up in. But we hadn’t the means of course, my parents hadn’t the means to send me to England. So from school I went to the South African College of Music for a period, initially to study for a degree there. But I became aware that there was a scholarship which was run by the Performing Rights Society and it was open to competition for two years’ study in England. So I thought I would put in for that. It was competitive, as I say, and my only chance really for getting abroad. But there was a problem at the time because various people applied for it, senior to me, and the committee could not actually make up its mind — it was 50/50 divided — as to whom to award the scholarship to. So they decided to give the casting vote to the newly appointed head of the College of Music, who was Dr Eric Chisholm, who arrived early in 1946 directly from his war service and the matter was turned over to him and he decided that the scholarship should be awarded to me. So I really owe the fact that I’m here to him, in fact. So that was rather providential, because I doubt if I would have had another chance of coming to this country. SM: Who was your opposition for the scholarship? JJ: Well, Hubert was in for it and I think would undoubtedly have got it but actually didn’t want to come so soon. He did subsequently get it and came later during the early 50s. I think he was already involved in a job and felt that he had to stick with it for a time. Stefans Grové, I’m not sure whether he actually went in for it. I know he went to America and I think he got another award for getting to the States. I think in fact he didn’t go in for it. That may have been, I can only speculate, I just don’t know, may have been a political thing about coming to England. He never has been to England, as far as I know. Not for any length of time anyway. He went to the States eventually and stayed there for a considerable time. As I say, Hubert at the time didn’t want to come and went in for it later. Who the other opposition was, I don’t know. Blanche Gerstman came. She came later and I’m not sure whether the scholarship still exists. Of course Arnold [van Wyk] was the first holder of it. He came in 1938-39, thereabouts. SM: Before we move on, you mentioned W.H. Bell and said that he was a tremendously inspiring teacher. Would you like to elaborate on that? You talked once before about him and said that you thought that perhaps too little credit was given to him as a kind of founding father of South African composition. He taught nearly all those first generation composers, including Arnold? INFORMATION CENTRE FOR SOUTHERN AFRICAN MUSIC 3 Interview with John Joubert JJ: No, he never taught Arnold. He offered to, but Arnold for some reason or another felt reluctant to accept his offer. I don’t know if you’ve seen that collection of letters that Hubert published. It is an extremely interesting volume and it gives the story there about how Arnold felt about taking lessons with Bell. I’ll see if I can find it later on, but it’s quite an interesting piece of South African history. SM: Was it because he wouldn’t accept lessons for free, or was it because Bell would have had a very English oriented approach? JJ: I don’t think Arnold would have objected to that. I think partly he was reluctant to accept lessons for free. He may also have felt out of step with Bell’s compositional style at that time, because Bell was of course already retired by that time and I suppose belonged to a previous generation of composers. Maybe he felt that his approach would not be, I don’t know, up to date enough, I’m not sure.