The Music Of Georges Auric

Jean Cocteau, Erik Satie, Moulin Rouge - the names popularly associated with film composer Georges Auric's career conjure visions of a distant and glamorous early twentieth-century Parisian art world. Auric wrote well over 100 film scores, including the soundtrack for Roman Holiday, and was notably affiliated with Les Six, a group of French composers reacting to the musical establishment of the 1920s. But Auric's life and work spanned far beyond this limited sphere. A lifelong involvement in politics - from his leftism during the Popular Front years of the 1930s to his significant role in the French Communist Party's musical resistance of the 1940s - heavily influenced his sound and aesthetic. His advocacy on behalf of his fellow musicians led him into the fight for fair copyright laws, initially in France and then worldwide. And over the course of a seven-decade-long career, Auric took on roles as diverse as music critic, opera director, and arts administrator, revealing a deep involvement in his country's musical life that makes the label of "composer" seem inadequate. The first English-language biography of Auric, Georges Auric: A Life in Music and Politics rethinks the conventional ideas of what it means to be a composer. Drawing from an astonishing three dozen untapped archives, including the private archives of Auric's widow, author Colin Roust presents a picture of Auric that is as multifaceted as the man's career. Using Auric's life as a lens, Roust reveals the transforming role of music - and the composer - in twentieth-century society.

This serves as the first comprehensive catalogue of the orchestral, vocal, and chamber music composed by Georges Auric, one of FranceOCOs most important twentieth-century musicians. Approximately three hundred-fifty compositions are considered here with full descriptions of all known printed and manuscript sources; locations of literary works on which some are based; selections of important reviews; discographies and lists of videos; and relevant performance data including first performances or showings. Auric was an influential figure in French art and culture and was widely known to the entire French artistic establishment. His compositional abilities were extremely facile and he could write a significant film score in the short time of a few weeks. On more than one occasion he scored four or more films in the same year in addition to a myriad of other duties. He was a child prodigy who studied at the Paris Conservatory and the Schola Cantorum while still a teenager. Later in life he was a major member of the so called Les Six (Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, and Germaine Tailleferre), which was a major force in twentieth century music. With the recent interest in AuricOCOs contribution to films, it provides rich detail culled from libraries and private archives around the world, numerous newspapers and journals, unpublished letters by Auric, and the secondary literature. With the publication of this catalogue all the members of Les Six are now represented."

This is the first comprehensive catalogue of the orchestral, vocal, and chamber music and film, television programs and series, and spectacles by one of France's most important 20th century musicians, Georges Auric.

The first English-language biography of this major French film composer, George Auric: A Life in Music and Politics examines not only the impact of Auric's leftist politics on his work, but also the myriad roles he held outside of film composition - including but not limited to music critic, opera director, and arts administrator.

In the early 20th century, a group of Parisian avant-garde composers known as "Les Six" rebelled against the current musical vogue. This compilation features a total of 20 works.