"Another string to my bow…"

The early 1920s was a time of musical revolution with the arrival of Schonberg's twelve-tone music. The result would be music known as serialism, the most famous practitioners of which were Schonberg himself, his students Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and later, of course, Pierre Boulez, Georges Delerue's contemporary.
Although Delerue was open to many kinds of expression, he was left cold by atonal music, which he tended to find "sterile", to use his own word.
Still, the dominance of atonal in contemporary composition caused Delerue to doubt his own style and tastes and actually left him, for about ten years, unable to compose symphonic music.
After this period of silence and reflection, he simply accepted his distaste for the atonal and went about composing in a style that pleased him.

"I am always happy when conducting my film music all over the world, above all with today's orchestras, which are so very different from each other. And it is even more exciting when I am invited to direct my classical works. Composing music is one thing, conducting them is also an enormous pleasure."

"I began my study of classical music at the Conservatory at Roubaix and continued at the National Conservatory in Paris. It was Darius Milhaud who first discovered in me a talent for theater and the dramatic arts. That was what first set me on the path to an international career."

"I don't like to be labeled. Film music is an expressive aesthetic form like any other, with its own high values."

"In France, more than elsewhere, one has a tendency to label film music with some disdain, no doubt because cinema is an obviously commercial form of art."

"In Britain and in the United States, a film composer is considered simply a musical composer."

"If I really had to put a label on myself, which I don't like doing because it is risky and can be misinterpreted, I would call myself a neo-romantic."

"It is obvious that when I compose a musical theme for a film I naturally put at least something of my own being into it. And when I need to feel a complete liberty in creation, I compose a quartet or a concerto or some chamber music."

"I have always needed that other string to my bow or what I call my other hat."

"It is obvious that musical structure is very important, but musical expression is no less so."

"I like what Debussy once said : "Music is the expression of the inexpressible." One can't say it better than that."

"When I compose classical music, I'm always afraid of boring the listener."

"If I notice that I am boring myself while composing, I can't help but imagine that the listeners will be bored too. And so I tear up what I've written and start again."

"I always try to put as much human warmth as possible into my compositions and I also like things to be said quickly. It serves no purpose to compose unending developmental passages."

"My goal is always for my music to go straight to the heart, so that you do not have to read the musical score to grasp what I want to express. Music is for reaching out to other human beings as rapidly as possible."