Composer, conductor Joseph Sammut dies, aged 97

Composer and conductor Joseph Sammut has died. He was 97 years old.

Sammut was born in 1926 and comes from a musical family. His grandfather was an able doublebass player, and his father Vincent worked as a cellist with the Orchestra of the Commander in Chief of the Royal Navy (C-in-C), a professional classical orchestra attached to the British admiralty in Malta.

At a very young age Joseph had received his initial musical training from his father. Some years later, he had started studying the bassoon. Vincent used to encourage his son to study the bassoon.

At only eighteen, Joseph Sammut had joined the Commander in Chief Orchestra, becoming its first bassoon player. Joseph Sammut had never planned to become a conductor, but when conductor Francis Bellizzi had retired, three candidates applied and Sammut was chosen for the job at the age of 26 years old. He had tried to involve the orchestra in anything he could find, and would do anything that was required, even setting up the music stands.

In 1968, as a result of rundowns in the Royal Services, the C-in-C orchestra had come to an end.

Joseph was worried not only for himself and his family, but for the group of some 20 orchestra musicians who all had their families to take care of – some of them quite young. He simply could not tell the orchestra that they were being made redundant with such short notice.

However, after heated discussions, good news had arrived.

In the end, the Commander-inChief agreed that salaries would be paid for two more years, but that the orchestra was to be transferred to the Manoel Theatre and become the Manoel Theatre Orchestra.

Sammut had remained in charge of the Manoel Theatre Orchestra (nowadays known as the Malta Philharmonic) for twenty-five years. From Principal Bassoonist to a conductor with the Mediterranean Fleet’s Commander-in-Chief, and the first conductor of Malta’s National Orchestra.

Sammut was also the musical director of the Chorus Melitensis between 1961 and 1978, and of the Societa Filarmonica La Valette between 1970 and 2006.

He had conducted the concert inaugurating the Aurora Opera House in Gozo in 1976, and the first ever opera in Gozo, Madama Butterfly, on 7th January 1977.

He had directed the Leone Band for 33 years, between 1958 and 1991.