Maurice Jarre, RIP

[dirac]

Maurice Jarre has died at age 84.

Nor was that the only problem. The score [for Lawrence of Arabia] was to be recorded in London with a subsidy from the British government – with the proviso that the conductor should be British. Sir Adrian Boult was duly brought in for a rehearsal, but when Jarre began to explain the technicalities of synchronising the music of a whole orchestra with film footage, Boult was horrified. In the event Jarre conducted, though Boult's name remained on the film credits in order to qualify for the subsidy. Jarre was credited on the original soundtrack recording and, surprisingly, no one seemed to notice the discrepancy.

Jarre's score, which won him the first of three Academy awards, employed strings in tremolo and in wide-spaced intervals to suggest the vast shimmering wastes of the Arabian desert, while incorporating the chromatic effects of Arabian music. Jarre shared Lean's belief that film music should be used not to punctuate events but to suggest emotions that cannot be shown visually.

[innopac]

He also composed the music for Roland Petit's Notre-Dame de Paris.

[dirac]

Thanks, innopac, he did indeed.

In 1950, Jean Vilar relaunched the Théâtre Nationale Populaire, based at the Palais de Chaillot, and engaged Jarre as composer of incidental music for an immensely influential series of stagings of the classics. "It was the best time of my life, the most difficult, the most interesting, the most exciting," Jarre recalled. A three-CD set of his stage music was later released, including scores for plays by Shakespeare, Molière, Beaumarchais, De Musset and Merimée. Jarre also composed music for Jean-Louis Barrault and Madeleine Renaud's company, and a ballet for Roland Petit, Notre-Dame de Paris, with costumes by Yves Saint Laurent, at the Palais Garnier in 1965. By then, Jarre was a world-famous film composer.