application/pdf
2036-461X
21362
9
en
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Ph.D. Thesis Abstract - Experiments in Dramatic Music: The Film Music and Criticism of Georges Auric, 1919-1946
Text.Serial.Journal
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
7
Projects & Abstracts
2007-10-01
2023-10-09
2007-10-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Colin Roust
2007/10/01
University of Michigan
2036-461X
9
en
Ph.D. Thesis Abstract - Experiments in Dramatic Music: The Film Music and Criticism of Georges Auric, 1919-1946
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/21362/18968
7
EXPERIMENTS IN DRAMATIC MUSIC: THE FILM MUSIC AND CRITICISM
OF GEORGES AURIC, 1919-1946
Colin Roust / Ph.D. Thesis Abstract
University of Michigan




   Based on current musicological scholarship, Georges Auric seems to have led two completely
different careers. During and after World War I, he emerged as an enfant terrible of the Parisian
avant-garde - a disciple of Erik Satie's, a member of the famed Groupe des Six, the dedicatee of
Jean Cocteau's Le Cog et l'Arlequin, and the only composer to have ballets premiered in three
consecutive seasons of Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Following World War I, however, Auric
appears as the very personification of the French musical establishment - president of various
composers' unions, Administrator of the Paris Opéra and Opéra-Comique, Grand Officier of the
Légion d'Honneur, member (and for one term, the President) of the Académie des Beaux-Arts,
and the eleven-term President of the Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs, et Editeurs de Musique.
This dual portrayal of Auric suggests the paradoxes that defined this artist's career: the paysan of
Paris, the populist who composed music with the highest artistic aspirations, and the concert-hall
composer whose career is defined by his commercial films. Historically, this dissertation explores
the paradoxes of Auric's life while filling in some of the thirty-year gap that exists in current
scholarship. It also addresses issues of multimedia collaboration and methods of audiovisual
analysis. Following the model of Auric's own memoirs, it will be a composer-centered history that
is more a web of micro-histories than a grand narrative.
   Auric's place in music historiography has been defined by his film music. Forty years ago, this
excluded him from the canon of Western music. Today, with the broader acceptance of film music
scholarship, Auric's music is ripe for study. Between 1930 and 1969, Auric collaborated in Paris,
Nice, London, and Hollywood on approximately 130 films. He worked with many of the direc-
tors who defined the classical styles of these filmmaking centers: Marc Allégret, René Clair,
Henri-Georges Clouzot, Jean Cocteau, Jean Delannoy, John Huston, Max Ophüls, and William
Wyler, just to mention those best represented in academic literature. The success of his work is
attested to, on the one hand, by awards that the film and music industries bestowed on Auric: the
Music Prize at the first Cannes International Film Festival in 1946 (for Delannoy's Symphonie
pastorale), the Music Prize at the 1950 Venice Film Festival (for Cocteau's Orphée), a 1964
nomination for an Emmy Award (for The Kremlin, Peter Jarvis, 1963), and a gold record for "The
Waltz from Moulin Rouge". On the other hand, his success was signaled in a 1990 interview by
 Royal S. Brown with Maurice Jarre, a French composer currently active in both Paris and
 Hollywood. According to Jarre, there were only two composers who did any significant work for
 the classical French cinema - Maurice Jaubert (who composed only twenty-two film scores
 before falling in the Battle of France) and Georges Auric.
   In four chapters, this dissertation examines Auric's writings on film music and the first seven-
 teen years of his film career, from Cocteau's Sang d'un poète (1930) to Delannoy's Symphon

 CINÉMa   & GIE no 9 Eall                                                                    153
                            2007
 COLIN ROUST


 pastorale. The first chapter focuses on Auric's path into the cinema, focusing in large part on
 engagement with the aesthetics of Guillaume Apollinaire's esprit nouveau and
 et l'Arlequin. A discussion of the transition from silent to sound cinema leads to analyses of the
 audiovisual interaction and collaborative processes of Sang d'un poète and Clair's A Nous, la
 Liberte! (1931). The second chapter turns to the increasingly evident political stances embodied
 in Auric's music as the French left gained political power. While writing for the communist papers
Marianne and Paris-Soir, Auric advocated a populist style that both had high artistic aspirations
and was affectively plain and direct. As a member of the executive committee of the Fedération
Musicale Populaire, he also helped support himself and like-minded composers through publish-
ing and performing opportunities. Auric's collaborations with director Marc Allégret and screen-
writer Marcel Achard during this period combine populist music with plots celebrating the cult of
youth and reflecting an aesthetic that has been described as "social realism". The third chapter
focuses on Auric's activities during the German Occupation of France, particularly his resistance
efforts as a member of the executive committee of the Front National de la Musique. During these
dark years, Auric sought to define a nationalist style for French composers, a style that is most
evident in films like Jean Delannoy's L'Eternel Retour (1943) and Le Bossu (1944). The final
chapter addresses Auric's first two post-Liberation French films, Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête
(1946) and Delannoy's Symphonie pastorale, as well as his acceptance into the musical estab.
lishment. Both scores exhibit what might be called Auric's "mature" style of film music, which
would serve as a model for other composers of the classical French cinema. Even as Auric began
accepting film work overseas, these films suggest that the post-war rebirth of French cinema
would be the result of nationalistic films drawing on French literary traditions. Throughout all
four chapters, but particularly in the analysis of Symphonie pastorale, I develop an audiovisual
score that indicates the relationships between music, images, dialogue, and editing. This form of
descriptive notation aims to recognize that films and film scores are products of collaborative
efforts involving director, screenwriter, cameraman, editor, composer, and orchestrator.
   As in Auric's memoirs (Quand j'étais là, 1978), this dissertation is not exactly about Auric him-
self. Instead, he is used as the connective tissue uniting the four self-contained chapters, each of
which focuses primarily on one collaborative team that existed in a specific milieu. (The one
exception is Auric's forty-plus-year collaboration with Cocteau, which will permeate three of the
chapters). Each chapter thus becomes a case study exploring Auric's biography and writings, the
history of French cinema, modes of multimedia collaboration, and the place of Auric and film in
specific moments of French history.
