GEORGES DELERUE (1925-1992)
Born into a modest working class family from Roubaix, France, Georges Delerue started his classical music training relatively late in life. Darius Milhaud, one of his distinguished teachers at the Paris Conservatoire, found the young man to be exceptionally gifted for dramatic music and he encouraged him to make the best use of it. Delerue would indeed spend most of his time and energy working for the stage and the screen, without renouncing writing for the concert hall for all that.
After landing the prestigious post of conductor of the French State Radio Orchestra, Georges Delerue began to write music for theatre, documentaries and 'sound and light' shows. In the mid fifties, he became involved in the universe of art-house cinema. His name became gradually associated with the French New Wave, which was then sweeping France. His notable collaborations include those with Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard (Contempt), Louis Malle and François Truffaut (Shoot the Piano Player, Jules and Jim, Two English Girls, The Last Metro and The Woman Next Door, to name only a few).
In a lighter vein, Delerue scored nearly all the films directed by Philippe de Broca between 1959 and 1988, from Les Jeux de l'amour to Chouans!, as well as That Man from Rio and King of Hearts. British and American directors found his services as appealing, including Charles Jarrott (Anne of TheThousand Days), John Huston (A Walk with Love and Death), Jack Clayton (The Pumpkin Eater, Our Mother's House), Fred Zinnemann (A Man for All Seasons, Julia) and Ken Russell (Women in Love).
In the early eighties, at the height of his success, with three César awards, an Emmy Award and one Oscar (for the very Vivaldi-sounding A Little Romance), Georges Delerue decided to relocate to Hollywood. The most memorable scores from this American period are The Black Stallion Returns, produced by Francis Ford Coppola, Agnes of God by Canadian Norman Jewison and starring Jane Fonda, Crimes of the Heart and Black Robe by Bruce Beresford, Steel Magnolias by Herbert Ross and Joe Versus the Volcano, produced by Steven Spielberg in 1991, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. The composer still had some important assignments in his native country, like the commemorative La Révolution française in 1989.
COMPOSERS