Maurice Jarre

Biography

Maurice-Alexis Jarre (French: [mɔʁis alɛksi ʒaʁ]; 13 September 1924 – 28 March 2009) was a French composer and conductor, mainly of film scores. He was particularly known for his collaborations with film director David Lean, composing the scores to all of his films from 1962 to 1984. He received numerous accolades over the course of his career, including three Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globes, and a Grammy Award.
Jarre won three Academy Awards for Best Original Score for the David Lean films Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and A Passage to India (1984). He was Oscar-nominated for Sundays and Cybèle (1962), The Message (1976), Witness (1985), Gorillas in the Mist (1988), and Ghost (1990). Notable scores also include Eyes Without a Face (1959), The Longest Day (1962), The Train (1964), The Collector (1965), Grand Prix (1966), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), Fatal Attraction (1987), and Dead Poets Society (1989). He worked with such directors as Alfred Hitchcock, Elia Kazan, John Huston, Luchino Visconti, John Frankenheimer, and Peter Weir.
Three of his compositions spent a total of 42 weeks on the UK singles chart. The biggest hit was "Somewhere My Love" (to his tune "Lara's Theme", with lyrics by Paul Francis Webster) performed by the Mike Sammes Singers, which reached Number 14 in 1966 and spent 38 weeks on the chart.
Jarre was the father of musician Jean-Michel Jarre and the adoptive father of screenwriter Kevin Jarre.

Early life and education

Maurice-Alexis Jarre was born on 13 September 1924 in Lyon, France, the son of Gabrielle Renée (née Boullu) and André Jarre, a radio technical director.
He first enrolled in the engineering school at the Sorbonne, but decided to pursue music courses instead. He left the Sorbonne against his father's will and enrolled at the Conservatoire de Paris to study composition and harmony and chose percussion as his major instrument.
He became director of the Théâtre National Populaire and recorded his first film score in France in 1951. He wrote the score for Toute la mémoire du monde by Alain Resnais. In 1954, his radio opera, Ruisselle, won the Prix Italia for musical works in Perugia.

Film scoring

In 1961, Jarre's music career experienced a major change when American film producer Sam Spiegel asked him to write the score for the 1962 epic Lawrence of Arabia, directed by David Lean. The acclaimed score won Jarre his first Academy Award and he would go on to compose the scores to all of Lean's subsequent films. He followed with The Train (1964) and Grand Prix (1966), both for director John Frankenheimer, and in between had another great success in David Lean's Doctor Zhivago, which included the lyricless tune "Lara's Theme" (later the tune for the song "Somewhere My Love"), and which earned him his second Oscar. He worked with Alfred Hitchcock on Topaz (1969): although Hitchcock's experiences with the film were unhappy, he was satisfied with Jarre's score, telling him, "I have not given you a great film, but you have given me a great score."
Jarre's score for David Lean's Ryan's Daughter (1970), set in Ireland, completely eschews traditional Irish music styles, according to Lean's preferences. The song "It Was a Good Time" from Ryan's Daughter went on to be recorded by musical stars such as Liza Minnelli, who used it in her critically acclaimed television special Liza with a Z, as well as by others during the 1970s. He contributed the music for Luchino Visconti's The Damned (1969), and John Huston's The Man Who Would Be King (1975).
He was again nominated for an Academy Award for scoring The Message in 1976, for the director and producer Moustapha Akkad. He followed with Witness (1985) and Dead Poets Society (1989), for which he won a British Academy Award.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Jarre turned his hand to science fiction, with scores for The Island at the Top of the World (1974), Dreamscape (1984), Enemy Mine (1985), and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985). The last is written for full orchestra, augmented by a chorus, four grand pianos, a pipe organ, digeridoo, fujara, a battery of exotic percussion, and three ondes Martenot, which feature in several of Jarre's other scores, including Lawrence of Arabia, Jesus of Nazareth, The Bride and Prancer. The balalaika features prominently in Jarre's score for Doctor Zhivago.
In 1990, Jarre was again nominated for an Academy Award, scoring the supernatural love story/thriller Ghost. His music for the final scene of the film is based on "Unchained Melody" composed by fellow film composer Alex North. Other films for which he provided the music include A Walk in the Clouds (1995), for which he wrote the score and all of the songs, including the romantic "Mariachi Serenade". Also to his credit is the passionate love theme from Fatal Attraction (1987), and the moody electronic soundscapes of After Dark, My Sweet (1990). He was well respected by other composers including John Williams, who stated, on Jarre's death, "(He) is to be well remembered for his lasting contribution to film music ... we all have been enriched by his legacy."
Jarre's television work includes the theme for the short-lived 1967 Western series on CBS, Cimarron Strip, his score for the miniseries Jesus of Nazareth (1977), directed by Franco Zeffirelli, Shōgun (1980), and the theme for PBS's Great Performances.
Jarre scored his last project in 2001, a television mini-series about the Holocaust titled Uprising.
He was "one of the giants of 20th-century film music" who was "among the most sought-after composers in the movie industry" and "a creator of both subtle underscoring and grand, sweeping themes, not only writing for conventional orchestras ... but also experimenting with electronic sounds later in his career".

Style and artistry

Jarre wrote mainly for orchestras, but began to favour synthesized music in the 1980s. Jarre pointed out that his electronic score for Witness was actually more laborious, time-consuming and expensive to produce than an orchestral score. Jarre's electronic scores from the 1980s also include Fatal Attraction, The Year of Living Dangerously, Firefox and No Way Out. A number of his scores from that era also feature electronic / acoustic blends, such as Gorillas in the Mist, Dead Poets Society, The Mosquito Coast and Jacob's Ladder.

Marriages and family

Jarre was married four times, the first three marriages ending in divorce. In the 1940s, his marriage to Francette Pejot, a French Resistance member and concentration camp survivor, produced a son, Jean-Michel Jarre, a French composer, performer, and music producer, who is one of the pioneers in electronic music. When Jean-Michel was five years old, Maurice split up with his wife and moved to the United States, leaving Jean-Michel with his mother in France.
In 1965, Jarre married French actress Dany Saval; together they had a daughter, Stephanie Jarre. He next married American actress Laura Devon (1967–1984), resulting in his adopting her son, Kevin Jarre, a screenwriter, with credits on such films as Tombstone and Glory (1989). From 1984 to his death, he was married to Fui Fong Khong.

Death

Jarre died of cancer on 28 March 2009 in Los Angeles.