Richard “Dick” Horowitz, retired principal timpanist of the Metropolitan Opera orchestra, died on Nov. 2, at age 91.
Richard Samuel Horowitz was born in New York on Feb. 3, 1924. After graduating from the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan, Horowitz studied at Brooklyn College and the Juilliard School. He joined the Metropolitan Opera orchestra in 1946, and became its principal timpanist in 1971. According to The New York Times, when he retired in 2012, he was believed to be the Met’s longest-serving employee and one of the longest-serving orchestral musicians in the nation.

Aside from his renown as a musician, Horowitz was also known for making conductor’s batons. His clients included such notable conductors as James Levine, Leonard Bernstein, Karl Böhm, Sarah Caldwell, Colin Davis, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Erich Leinsdorf, and Thomas Schippers. 

He also crafted the anvils used in the Met’s productions of Das Rheingold. Because Wagner wanted the anvils to produce specific pitches, standard anvils did not work, so Horowitz cut metal tubing into different lengths that, when struck, produced the correct sound and pitches.