Georges Auric

Georges Auric (French: [%C9%94%CA%81ik]; 15 February 1899 – 23 July 1983) was a French composer, born in Lodève, Hérault. He was considered one of Les Six, a group of artists informally associated with Jean Cocteau and Erik Satie.[1] Before he turned 20 he had orchestrated and written incidental music for several ballets and stage productions. He also had a distinguished career as a film composer.

Early life and education

Georges Auric began his musical career at a young age, performing a piano recital at the Société Musicale Indépendante at the age of 2. Several songs that he had written were then performed in the following year by Société Nationale de Musique.[2] Along with his early successes professionally, Auric studied music at the Paris Conservatoire, as well as composition with Vincent d'Indy at the Schola Cantorum de Paris and Albert Roussel.[3][4] Having gained recognition as a child prodigy both in composition and piano performance, he became a protégé of Erik Satie during the following decade. During the 1910s and 20s, he was a significant contributor of avant-garde music in Paris and was significantly influenced by Cocteau and the other composers of Les Six.[5]

Career

Auric's early compositions were marked by a reaction against the musical establishment and the use of referential material. Because of this and his association with Cocteau and Satie, Auric was grouped into Les Six by music critic Henri Collet, and was friends with the artist Jean Hugo. His participation led to writing settings of poetry and other texts as songs and musicals. Along with the other five composers, he contributed a piece to L'Album des Six. In 1921, Cocteau asked him to write the music for his ballet, Les Mariés de la tour Eiffel. He found himself short of time, so he asked his fellow composers of Les Six to contribute some music. All except Louis Durey agreed. During this time, he wrote his one-act opera Sous le masque (1927) (an earlier opera, La Reine de coeur (1919), is lost). It was also in 1927 that he contributed the Rondeau for the children's ballet L'Éventail de Jeanne, a collaboration between ten French composers. In 1952 he participated in yet another collaboration, the set of orchestral variations La Guirlande de Campra. Les Six, though an informal and short-lived group, became known for its reaction against the musical establishment of the time and the promotion of absurdism and satire; the group rebelled similarly against Wagner as it did against Debussy. The music of these composers, including Auric, represented the specific cultural scene of Paris at the time and rejected the international styles brought by Russian and German music, as well as the symbolism of Debussy.[6] Auric's later development as a populist composer was prefigured by many of the techniques and ideals of Les Six, especially the use of popular music and situations. Music of the circus or the dance hall played a significant role in the music of Les Six, especially in their actual collaborations.[7] However, Les Six soon drew apart, with Auric and others taking different approaches to their art.

Following his early successes as an avant-garde composer, Auric went through a transitional period during the 1930s. He began writing for film in 1930 and composed the music for A Nous, la Liberté! in 1931, which was well received. The film itself was criticized for supposed communist or anarchist themes, but there was general approval of Auric's score for the film.[8] While he was beginning a successful career as a film composer, his music went through a period of stagnation and change. His Piano Sonata (1931) was poorly received and was followed by a period of five years in which he wrote very little, including his first three film scores. His association with Cocteau continued through this period with his composition of the score to Cocteau's Le Sang d'un poète. However, he abandoned the elitist and highly referential attitudes of his earlier years by 1935 in favour of a populist approach.[9] He became associated with leftist groups and publications, including the Association des Ecrivains et des Artistes Révolutionnaires (AEAR), the Maison de la Culture, and the Fédération Musicale Populaire. He adopted four strategies to composing; first, to participate in groups with other leftist artists; second, to reach a wider audience by writing in more genres; third, to write music aimed at a younger audience; and fourth, to express his political views more directly in his music.[10]

The films that Auric chose to score in his career as a film composer were influenced by these new-found beliefs, as well as by old associations. He collaborated with Jean Cocteau, his longtime associate from the days of Les Six, on eleven films.[11] He composed music for a large number of films over the years, including films produced in France, England, and America. Among his most popular scores is the score for Moulin Rouge. The song from that movie, "Where Is Your Heart?", became very popular.[12] In 1962, he gave up writing for motion pictures when he became director of the Opéra National de Paris and then chairman of SACEM, the French Performing Rights Society. Auric continued to write classical chamber music, especially for winds, right up to his death.

Music criticism was another major facet of Auric's career. His criticism was focused on promoting the ideals of Les Six and Cocteau, known as esprit nouveau. Specifically, his criticism focused on the perceived pretentiousness of Debussy, Wagner, Saint-Saëns, and Massenet, as well as the music of those who followed their styles. Cocteau, Les Six, and Auric found the music of those composers to be divorced from reality and instead preferred music that was grounded in populism.[13]

Personal life and politics

While Auric criticized Satie in the 1920s for joining the French Communist Party, he became associated with several leftist groups and contributed to the communist newspapers Marianne and Paris-Soir in the 1930s. The Association des Ecrivains et des Artistes Révolutionnaires (AEAR) was dedicated to bringing together Soviet and French communist artists to discuss their goals and approaches for disseminating their ideas to the public. It was through this group that Auric met many other far left artists and thinkers. These ideals transferred into Auric's concert music as well as his choices in which movies he scored.[14] In 1930, Auric married the painter Eleanore Vilter, who died in 1982.[15] Auric died in Paris on 23 July 1983 at the age of 83, and was interred at Montparnasse Cemetery, beside his wife

Wikipedia

Georges Auric, born in Lodève in 1899, was a child prodigy. In 1913 his parents moved to 36 bis rue Lamarck in Montmartre in order that their precocious son could attend the Conservatoire. From 1914 he also studied with D’Indy and Roussel at the Schola Cantorum. At the age of 14 Auric wrote a perceptive and erudite critique about a piece by Erik Satie for a music magazine, and sent a copy to Satie. In due course Satie arrived at Auric’s residence, asked to see the author of the article, and was astonished when he discovered that the author was a young boy.5

Auric and Satie would become good friends until a major falling-out in the 1920s. Auric began to compose before his tenth birthday and he was just 15 when his music was heard for the first time in public. The occasion was a Société Nationale de Musique concert which included some songs of Auric. In 1916 Auric met both Francis Poulenc and Jean Cocteau, who dedicated his manifesto Le Coq et l’Arlequin to Auric. Before and during the Second World War, Auric lived in the south of France. In 1945 he moved to an apartment on the fourth floor of 90 rue Faubourg St Honoré with his wife Nora, who was an artist of moderate talent. The Aurics’ marriage was unconventional, even by Parisian standards. Nora had numerous lovers before becoming enamoured with Guy de Lesseps, the grandson of the constructor of the Suez Canal. De Lesseps, several years younger than Nora, moved into the apartment, acting as chauffeur and general factotum. Auric seems to have accepted the ménage à trois and he remained on good terms with Nora Among the music composed here were the ballets La Fontaine de Jouvence and Phèdre. His largest source of income came from film scores, including “The Lavender Hill Mob,” “The Titfield Thunderbolt” and Moulin Rouge. His song “Where is your heart?” from Moulin Rouge became a top ten hit. It has been suggested that Auric squandered his talent by abandoning “serious” music in order to compose music for the cinema, but there is no doubt that his prodigious output of film scores made him a very wealthy man. In 1962 he was able to move into a luxurious apartment at 36 avenue Matignon. 6

1962 was a significant year for Auric; he was elected to the Académie des BeauxArts and he also assumed responsibility for both the Opéra and the OpéraComique. In this latter role he worked hard to arrest the decline in standards of both houses. He resigned from the post in 1968. Auric was also president of SACEM, the French performing rights society. Nora continued to take lovers in this singularly “open” marriage. The most significant of these was de Lesseps who still shared the apartment. Nora was griefstricken when De Lesseps died in 1967. By the late 1960s, Auric’s career as a composer of film scores was coming to an end and he turned his attention to chamber music. Between 1968 and 1976 he composed a number of pieces for various instrumental combinations which he entitled Imaginées. Towards 1980 Nora developed Alzheimer’s disease. Her condition deteriorated rapidly and she died in 1982. Later in that year Auric married the soprano Michèle Battaïni in his apartment.

Michèle was some 50 years Auric’s junior. The marriage would be short-lived; Auric developed dementia and died in this apartment in July 1983 at the age of 84. He lies buried in the Cimetière de Montparnasse. 

Source

• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Georges-Auric
• https://www.musicologie.org/Biographies/auric_georges.html
• http://www.vogue.com/1437189/haute-cuisine-georges-auric-recipes-vo...

Georges Auric est un compositeur français, né à Lodève (Hérault) le 15 février 1899 et mort à Paris (8e) le 23 juillet 1983. Il fut compagnon de route du Parti communiste français.

Biographie

Il fait ses premières études de piano au conservatoire de Montpellier puis entre en 1913 au conservatoire de musique de Paris où il est l'élève jusqu'en 1914 de Georges Caussade (1873-1936) en contrepoint et fugue. À partir de 1914, il étudie la composition avec Vincent d'Indy à la Schola Cantorum de Paris. À partir de 1915, il fréquente Igor Stravinsky et Erik Satie avant de se joindre au groupe des Six avec Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Louis Durey et Germaine Tailleferre. Ami de Jean Cocteau, du peintre Jean Hugo, de Valentine Hugo et de Raymond Radiguet il passe avec eux plusieurs vacances au Piquey (bassin d'Arcachon) et dactylographie le texte du Bal du comte d'Orgel.

Ses premières mélodies s'inspirent d'Erik Satie, d'Igor Stravinski, d'Emmanuel Chabrier.

Il a écrit des critiques musicales dès 1913 (il avait 14 ans) dans la Revue française de musique. Le 10 décembre 1913, celle-ci publie son article intitulé « Erik Satie, musicien humoriste » qui ravira le compositeur. Satie lui demandera à le rencontrer et sera tout surpris de l'âge du rédacteur4.

Il est notamment l'auteur avec Diaghilev des ballets Les Fâcheux et Les Matelots ainsi que de la tragédie chorégraphique Phèdre. Parallèlement, il signe des musiques de films aussi célèbres que Le Sang d'un poète (1930), La Belle et la Bête (1946) et Orphée (1950) de Jean Cocteau, Moulin Rouge (1952), réalisé par John Huston, Lola Montès (1955) de Max Ophüls, Du rififi chez les hommes, réalisé par Jules Dassin (1955), Notre-Dame de Paris de Jean Delannoy et La Grande Vadrouille de Gérard Oury.

Il fut président de la Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique (SACEM) de 1954 à 1978, administrateur de la Réunion des théâtres lyriques nationaux du 1er juin 1962 au 31 juillet 1968 et membre du conseil culturel du Cercle Culturel de Royaumont.

Georges Auric a épousé le 30 octobre 1930, l'artiste peintre Eleonore Vilter (Watra (Autriche) 1902 - Paris 1982) connue sous le nom de Nora Auric. Georges Auric est inhumé au cimetière du Montparnasse à Paris.

Wikipedia