Georges Delerue | Artist
Georges Delerue was a French film composer born 1925 in Roubaix, France. He composed over 350 scores for cinema and television and won numerous important film music awards. The French newspaper Le Figaro named him "the Mozart of cinema." Delerue's grandfather led an amateur chorale group and his mother sang and played piano at family gatherings. By the age of fourteen he was playing clarinet at the local music conservatory. He played clarinet with local bands, eventually transitioning to piano under the instruction of Madame Picavet-Bacquart. He studied Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, and Grieg, and was particularly inspired by Richard Strauss. Following a long convalescence after being diagnosed with scoliosis, Georges decided to become a composer. By the early 1950s Delerue was composing music for short films and writing theatrical music for the Théâtre Babylone and the Opéra Comique. In 1954 he wrote his first compositions for historical spectacles of light and sound, Lisieux and The Liberation of Paris. In 1955 he composed his Concert Symphony for Piano and Orchestra, and in January 1957 his opera The Snow Knight premiered at Nancy and was a popular success. In 1959 he composed his first score for a feature film, Le bel âge. His career was diverse and he composed frequently for major art house directors and the cream of French new wave cinema, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, Louis Malle, and Bernardo Bertolucci, besides later working on several Hollywood productions, including Oliver Stone's Platoon and Salvador. Another director Delerue composed for was Ken Russell, who in return filmed a BBC documentary about Delerue entitled Don't Shoot the Composer (1966). From his discography of over one hundred studio albums, mostly film soundtracks, some standouts include the iconic EP's Jules et Jim (1961) and Le mépris (1963), Il Conformista (1971), The Day of the Dolphin (1973), The Last Metro (1980) Agnes of God (1985), and Platoon (2018). Also highly recommended is the 1997 recording by the London Sinfonietta Music From the Films of François Truffaut. During his 42-year career, he composed scores for 200 feature movies, 125 short ones, 70 TV films, and 35 TV serials. Late in his career he received an Academy Award for A Little Romance (1980), three César Awards, two ASCAP Awards, and one Gemini Award for Sword of Gideon (1987). Delerue was the first composer to win three consecutive César Awards for Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1979), Love on the Run (1980), and The Last Metro (1981). Georges Delerue was named Commander of Arts and Letters, one of France's highest honours.
Artist Website : wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Delerue
Featured Albums: Georges Delerue
Related Artists: Halim El-Dabh
