Monday 4: ***keep in music folder****

“I listen with my eyes and I look with my ears”

French composer Alexandre Desplat is the son of a Greek mother and a French father who met in the U.S. while both were attending the University of California at Berkeley, married in San Francisco, and settled in France. He began studying the at age five, later switching to trumpet and then flute. Fascinated by both music and film, he decided to pursue a career as a composer of movie scores. Starting with Ki Lo Sa? in 1985, his scores for television and film had reached a total of 100 by 2007. In these works, he developed a contemplative style that did not attempt to respond on a point­by­point basis to the action onscreen, but rather set its own complementary mood. He began to attract attention in the U.S. with The Luzhin Defence in 2000, which had a album released in America by Silva Screen Records. His music for Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003) earned a Golden Globe nomination, and with that recognition he began to work increasingly on English­language films distributed by the studios, including Birth (2004), The Upside of Anger (2005), Hostage (2005), Casanova (2005), (2005) (also nominated for a Golden Globe), Firewall (2006), and The Painted Veil (2006) (a Golden Globe Award winner), all of which produced soundtrack albums. The Queen (2006) earned him his first Academy Award nomination. Career

Desplat has composed extensively for French cinema, Hollywood, and incidental music for over 100 films, including Lapse of Memory (1992), Family Express (1992), Regarde Les Hommes Tomber (1994), Les Péchés Mortels (1995), César­nominated Un Héros Très Discret (1996), Une Minute de Silence (1998), Sweet Revenge (1998), Le Château des Singes (1999), Reines d'un Jour (2001), the César­nominated Sur mes lèvres (2002), Rire et Châtiment (2003), the César­winner The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005), The Queen (2006), Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 (2010), The Ghost Writer (2010), 's remake of La Fille du Puisatier (2011),Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011). Desplat has composed individual songs that have been sung in films by such artists as Akhenaton, , , Valérie Lemercier, Miosotis, and . He has also written music for the theatre, including pieces performed at the Comédie Française. Desplat has conducted performances of his music played by the Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Munich Symphony Orchestra. Desplat has also given Master Classes at La Sorbonne in and the in London. In 2007, he composed the scores for 's Golden Compass; 's directorial debut Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium with American composer ; and the movie Lust, Caution. Prior to these break­out works, he contributed scores for The Luzhin Defence, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Syriana, Birth, Hostage, Casanova,The Nest and The Painted Veil, for which he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, Film Critics Association Award for Best Music, and the 2006 World Soundtrack Award. He won the 2007 BMI Film Music Award, 2007 World Soundtrack Award, 2007 European Film Award, and received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score for The Queen. He also won the Silver Berlin Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for Best Film Music in The Beat that My Heart Skipped. In 2008, Desplat received his second Oscar nomination for 's Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Desplat received his third Oscar nomination and a BAFTA nomination for Fantastic Mr. Fox in 2010, both of which were won by for . Desplat has composed music for Largo Winch, based on the Belgian comic; Afterwards a French­Canadian psychological thriller film directed by in English; Anne Fontaine's Coco avant Chanel based on the life of designer ; Robert Guédiguian's Armée du Crime; Cheri, reuniting him with director , whom he collaborated with on The Queen; Un Prophète reuniting with director ; Julie & Julia directed by ; Fantastic Mr. Fox, directed by and based on the novel by ; New Moon, directed by ; 's Ghost Writer; Tamara Drewe; The Special Relationship; and The King's Speech which earned Desplat his fourth Oscar nomination. In early 2011, Desplat began to write the music to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2. He reunited with director , who offered Desplat the opportunity to score the second part after his work on the Part 1 soundtrack in 2010 "enchanted everyone in the control room".[4][5] Desplat's soundtrack sequel to the 2008 film Largo Winch was released in 2011 and was well received. Desplat's 2011 projects included The Tree of Life, directed by (which he actually recorded in early 2010), A Better Life, La Fille du Puisatier, Roman Polanski's Carnage, and 's Ides of March. Desplat started 2012 with Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the ­directed biopic Cloclo, and Dreamworks Animation's . In June 2013, Desplat's first for Flute & Orchestra premiered in France with flautist Jean Ferrandis and the Orchestre Nationale des Pays de la Loire conducted by John Axelrod. His Trois Etudes for piano originally written for pianist had its U.S. premiere in October 2013 played by pianist . On 23 June 2014, it was announced that Desplat would head the jury at the 71st Venice International Film Festival. On Finding His Voice As he entered his teens, Desplat began to collect ’s legendary . But it wasn’t until he saw in 1977 that he finally accepted his fate. “I thought, ‘This man has heard Stravinsky! Prokofiev! Ravel! Debussy! All the Americana: Copland, Ives, and , of course,’’’ Desplat says. “But he has created a sound of his own that comes and plays with the film. I bought the vinyl and thought, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ It was written on the front of the sleeve—‘Composed and conducted by .’”

Desplat was a talented, classically trained , but he had never studied . So he decided to teach himself. “Video did not exist, so I would go and watch movies in the theater over and over to understand how the music worked,” he says. “And very early on I started reading pocket scores, too. ‘Why does this combination of instruments playing these notes sound like this?’ By reading the score I could figure it out. To this day, I still travel with scores. Every time I’m on a plane—it could be Stravinsky or Mozart or Ravel.”

All that was left was for Desplat to discover his voice.

QUESTION: CONSIDERING HIS STATEMENTS REGARDING JOHN WILLIAMS’ STAR WARS SCORES, DO YOU FEEL THAT DESPLAT’S CONSTANT INSPIRATION FROM CLASSICAL MASTERS SUCH AS MOZART MAKES HIM MORE “ARTISTIC” AND ORIGINAL OR LESS SO? CONSIDER WHAT YOU THINK MAKES ART MUSIC TRULY “ARTISTIC” AND COMPARE IT TO SOME OF DESPLAT’S WORKS. ALSO CONSIDER WHAT CONSTITUTES ORIGINALITY IN MUSIC.

WRITE AT LEAST ONE Paragraph using either this information or that which You Find ON YOur Own.

This will be DUE with YOUR practice LOG on Friday.