Joseph Kosma

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Joseph Kosma (born October 12, 1905 in Budapest , Austria-Hungary ; † August 7, 1969 in La Roche-Guyon , France ) was a Hungarian composer of Jewish origin who had lived in France since 1933. He drew attention there mainly with film music. His most famous piece is the song on the text Les feuilles mortes his friend, the poet Jacques Prevert , the first from the Diseuse Cora Vaucaire , later especially Juliette Greco and Yves Montand interpreted and, mostly with English text, an internationally-received jazz standard was ( Autumn Leaves ). Kosma also composed the music for operas, ballets (including for Roland Petit and Jean-Louis Barrault ), pantomimes (for Marcel Marceau ), stage pieces (for Jean-Paul Sartre , Georges Schehadé ) as well as vocal works, orchestral pieces and chamber music.

Life

He was born as József Kozma. He started playing the piano at the age of five and composed his first opera at the age of eleven. His teachers at the Budapest Music Academy included Leo Weiner and Béla Bartók . In 1928, thanks to a scholarship, he went to Berlin , where he met Eisler , Brecht and, last but not least, his future wife Lilli Apel. In 1933 the couple emigrated to Paris . With the German occupation of France, Kosma came under house arrest and a professional ban, but Prévert got him jobs in the film industry, for which colleagues made themselves available as front men. He escaped the imprisonment and deportation of foreign Jews from France. In 1944 Kosma got away with a bomb explosion.

Kosma died in 1969 in the Val-d'Oise department and was buried in the Montmartre cemetery in Paris.

Grave on the Cimetière de Montmartre

Filmography (selection)

Compositions

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. here the version by Eric Clapton , 2010, accessed on December 12, 2011. The original version with Cora Vaucaire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_p4O10n7PE as well as the later most popular French interpretation by Yves Montand: https: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLlBOmDpn1s
  2. Brockhaus Encyclopedia in the 19th edition, Volume 12 from 1990
  3. Neue Zeit of June 23, 1959, p. 4