Background
Georges Auric was born Feb. 15, 1899 in Lodève, France.
Georges Auric was born Feb. 15, 1899 in Lodève, France.
He studied at the Paris Conservatoire and at the Schola Cantorum, Paris, under Vincent d'Indy, whose teaching he found too intransigent, in the same way that he found the Conservatoire's to be lacking in imagination.
At the beginning of his career, Auric drew the attention of Serge Diaghilev, the first result of their association being the ballet Les Facheux (1924), a charming work, much of whose music was taken from an incidental score written for Molière'sMoliere's play of the same name. Les Matelots followed in 1925 and Pastorale in 1926. Auric speedily made a reputation as a composer for films and came to be in great demand by English film studios. His most remarkable score was for Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), and in the same year he wrote a notable score for Dead of Night. This was so successful that whenever there was a film made based on the East End of London it seemed that no English composer was able to supply the required bite and acid incisiveness, and London and Auric became synonymous in this respect. The most successful of these scores were for Hue and Cry (1946) and The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), which remain classics of their kind. He also wrote the score for the American film Moulin Rouge (1952), which contains the waltz that is perhaps his best-known composition. In 1950 he wrote a magnificent ballet score, Phèdre, which revealed an unsuspected side to his musical nature. For the concert hall, Auric wrote a fine Overture (1938), and a Piano Sonatina (1923) and Piano Sonata (1932). The texture of these two works is uncompromisingly slender for their material and reveals their stylistic periods as being not too wide apart. Auric wrote criticism for the papers Marianne and Paris-Soir. In 1954 he became president of S. A. C. E. M. From 1962 to 1968 he was general administrator of the Paris Opéra and the Opéra Comique. Auric died in Paris on July 23, 1983.
(In the early 20th century, composer Erik Satie assembled ...)
In 1930, Auric married the painter Eleanore Vilter, who died in 1982.