Maurice Jaubert

Maurice Jaubert was born in Nice, on January 3, 1900. He was the second son of François Jaubert, a lawyer who would become the president of the Nice bar, and of the former Haydée Faraut. He received his high school education at the Lycée Masséna, where he graduated in 1916. During this period, he also enrolled at the Nice Conservatory of music where he studied harmony, counterpoint and piano. He was awarded the first piano prize in 1916.

Contents

• Elective affinities manos hadjidakis for maurice jaubert
• Maurice jaubert valse grise piano solo version
• Concert Works
• Filmography
• Discography
• References

Then Maurice Jaubert left for Paris and studied law and literature at the Sorbonne. When he returned to his native town in 1919, he was the youngest lawyer in France. His first compositions date back this period but soon after he undertook his military service and became officer in engineering. Demobilized in 1922, Jaubert decided to give up law practice and devote all his time to music. The next year, he completed his musical formation in Paris with Albert Groz.

Jaubert’s compositions at the time include melodies, piano pieces, chamber music and divertissements. He wrote his first stage music in 1925 for a play by Calderon, Le Magicien prodigieux, using the Pleyela - he was then hired by Pleyel to record rolls on the Pleyela, a revolutionnary player piano at the time. Indeed, during his dazzling career Jaubert will always be attracted by technical innovations that could serve his artistic aspirations. While working on this play, he met a young soprano, Marthe Bréga, who would sing most of his vocal composItions. They married in 1926, with Maurice Ravel as Jaubert’s best man. They had a daughter, Françoise, in 1927.

In 1929, while pursuing his work for the concert hall and the stage, Maurice Jaubert began writing and conducting for cinema. Among his most important collaborations in the following decade, let’s mention Alberto Cavalcanti’s Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, Jacques and Pierre Prévert’s L'Affaire est dans le sac, Jean Vigo’s Zéro de conduite (Zero for Conduct) and L’Atalante, René Clair’s Quatorze JuilletQuatorze Juillet and Le Dernier Milliardaire, Julien Duvivier’s Carnet de bal (Life Dances On) and La Fin du Jour (The End of a Day), Henri Storck’s Belgian documentaries LÎle de Pâques and Regards sur la Belgique ancienne, Marcel Carné’s Drôle de drame, Hôtel du Nord, Quai des brumes (Port of Shadows) and Le Jour se lève (Daybreak).

Although he understands and appreciates film, in contrast with many of his contemporaries, it is but one of the numerous creative activities of Maurice Jaubert. As music director of Pathé-Nathan studio, he conducts the film scores of several other composers, including Arthur Honegger and Darius Milhaud. He regularly conducts at concerts in France and abroad. His writings comprise articles and lectures, as well as a large number of letters that constitute a vivid testimony on how he viewed his times, on his political opinions (on the Spanish Civil War, for instance) and his musical tastes (he proves to be a strong supporter of Kurt Weill at a time when he is totally misunderstood).

War disrupts this outstanding artistic path. Mobilized on September 1939, Maurice Jaubert joins the engineer company he is to command as a reserve captain. His company remains on the first line until the Armistice and he stays with his men all the time, except for two short leaves he spends in Nice, in January and April 1940. His letters to his wife reflect a spirit of sacrifice tinged with deep humanism. Jaubert will never hear his last two compositions, written on the base camp: fatally wounded in action, he dies a few hours later at the Baccarat Hospital on June 19, 1940.

Biography attributed to Emmanuel Chamboredon from Milan Records.