Maurice Jaubert

French Composer and Film Score Pioneer

(born Nice 3 January 1900 - wounded in combat at Azerailles near Baccarat, where he died 19 June 1940) was a French composer of incidental music for stage and film music, famous for his collaborations with the masters of poetic realism Jean Vigo, René Clair, Julien Duvivier and Marcel Carné. He also had a long collaboration with Jean Giraudoux. From 1931-5 he was music director of the Pathé-Nathan studios, where he conducted not only his own scores but those of Arthur Honneger and Darius Milhaud. He makes a cameo appearance as a conductor in Kurt Bernhardt's La Nuit de décembre (1939). As a journalist he championed many composers, including Kurt Weill. In Vigo's Zéro de conduite he played recorded sounds backwards to accompany a slow motion sequence, anticipating a favorite technique of musique concrète. François Truffaut made extensive use of his music in the late 1970s.