Jean Prodomidès was born on July 3, 1927, in Neuilly-sur-Seine from a father lawyer who naturally encourages him to study law. However the young boy is attracted by music and listens for hours to his father's mechanical piano. He ultimately attends the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique of Paris where he receives instruction from Noël Gallon and subsequently from Olivier Messiaen. Also, theorist René Leibowitz teaches him the dodecaphonic musical technique and sharpens his interest for atonality and instrumental research.

Soon after his military service, Jean Prodromidès comes straight into the cinematic world with the long feature Courte Tête (1956) by Norbert Carbonnaux.

At the end of the '50s, he contributes to Archimède le clochard by Gilles Grangier, a tailor-made movie for great actor Jean Gabin, who is so impressed by Prodromidès that he will recommend him to his favorite directors. In a very different style, he will also write the large-scale evocative music of Le Voyage en ballon (Stowaway in the Sky) by Albert Lamorisse, the intimate score, mostly choral of Les Amitiés particulières (1964) by Delannoy, as well as the memorable original soundtrack for two Roger Vadim's movies: Et mourir de plaisir (Blood and Roses) in 1960, and in 1968, Metzengerstein, the first of the three Tales of Mystery (Histoires extraordinaires) adapted from Edgar Allan Poe’s.

Early in the eighties, the renowned Polish director Andrzej Wajda meets Prodromidès following the listening of his oratorio Le Livre des Katuns and offers him to write the music for Danton, which remains his most audacious contribution to cinema. Disregarding the blossoming TV fiction serials, the composer will devote himself to "serious" music in which he was already involved since the late fifties. He penned notably the oratorio Les Perses, a first attempt in stereophonic recording for French television. The opera appears to be the ideal mean to extend his interest for dramatic expression, which was clearly demonstrated in his movie scores. To this day he wrote five operas : Passion selon nos doutes (1971), Les Traverses du Temps (1979), H. H. Ulysse (1984), La Noche Triste (1989) and Goya (1996).

© Christian Texier & Disques CinéMusique