{"id":807,"date":"2014-03-26T21:17:03","date_gmt":"2014-03-27T04:17:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=807"},"modified":"2020-10-18T11:57:27","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T18:57:27","slug":"georges-delerue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2014\/03\/26\/georges-delerue\/","title":{"rendered":"Georges Delerue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every once in a while I pull off a CD for evening\u2019s listening by Georges Delerue<\/a>, a French composer of film scores who died in 1992. He seemed to be best known for light playful scores for French films, such as the 1980 film A Little Romance<\/i><\/b>, for which he won an Oscar, but my interest in him was for the lovely, delicate, melancholy scores he did for English-language films, including especially The Day of the Dolphin<\/i><\/b> (with George C. Scott), Silkwood<\/i><\/b> (Meryl Streep), Agnes of God<\/i><\/b>, Julia<\/i><\/b>, and especially Black Robe<\/i><\/b>, my favorite. (He also did Platoon<\/i><\/b>, though that score was dominated by Barber\u2019s \u201cAdagio for Strings\u201d.)<\/p>\n

Black Robe<\/i><\/b> may be his best, most complex score of those I know, but my heart belongs to The Day of the Dolphin<\/i><\/b>, a movie I first chanced upon on TV one day at home when I was 18, and was struck by the music. I didn\u2019t see the full film until years later, but at some point I managed to tape record the music off the TV, and did a reduction\/transcription of the theme onto a piano score, which hand-written sheet music I still have somewhere in my file cabinet. It\u2019s lovely and heartbreaking. (I liked the movie more than many people, it seems, though I admit it has plausibility issues. The desolate finale is striking, especially since no film today would ever end that way.)<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the main theme, starting at about :30s. (You don’t need to watch the video, actually; just listen to the music.)<\/p>\n