Famous Composers from France
- Frédéric François Chopin (, also UK: , US: , French: [ʃɔpɛ̃], Polish: [ˈʂɔpɛn]; 1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic era who wrote primarily for solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown as a leading musician of his era, one whose "poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation."Chopin was born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin in the Duchy of Warsaw and grew up in Warsaw, which in 1815 became part of Congress Poland. A child prodigy, he completed his musical education and composed his earlier works in Warsaw before leaving Poland at the age of 20, less than a month before the outbreak of the November 1830 Uprising. At 21, he settled in Paris. Thereafter—in the last 18 years of his life—he gave only 30 public performances, preferring the more intimate atmosphere of the salon. He supported himself by selling his compositions and by giving piano lessons, for which he was in high demand. Chopin formed a friendship with Franz Liszt and was admired by many of his other musical contemporaries (including Robert Schumann). In 1835, Chopin obtained French citizenship. After a failed engagement to Maria Wodzińska from 1836 to 1837, he maintained an often troubled relationship with the French writer Amantine Dupin (known by her pen name, George Sand). A brief and unhappy visit to Majorca with Sand in 1838–39 would prove one of his most productive periods of composition. In his final years, he was supported financially by his admirer Jane Stirling, who also arranged for him to visit Scotland in 1848. For most of his life, Chopin was in poor health. He died in Paris in 1849 at the age of 39, probably of pericarditis aggravated by tuberculosis. All of Chopin's compositions include the piano. Most are for solo piano, though he also wrote two piano concertos, a few chamber pieces, and some 19 songs set to Polish lyrics. His piano writing was technically demanding and expanded the limits of the instrument: his own performances were noted for their nuance and sensitivity. Chopin invented the concept of the instrumental ballade. His major piano works also include mazurkas, waltzes, nocturnes, polonaises, études, impromptus, scherzos, preludes and sonatas, some published only posthumously. Among the influences on his style of composition were Polish folk music, the classical tradition of J.S. Bach, Mozart, and Schubert, and the atmosphere of the Paris salons of which he was a frequent guest. His innovations in style, harmony, and musical form, and his association of music with nationalism, were influential throughout and after the late Romantic period. Chopin's music, his status as one of music's earliest superstars, his (indirect) association with political insurrection, his high-profile love-life, and his early death have made him a leading symbol of the Romantic era. His works remain popular, and he has been the subject of numerous films and biographies of varying historical fidelity.
- Birthplace: Żelazowa Wola, Poland
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau (UK: , US: ; French: [ʒɑ̃ˈʒak ʁuˈso]; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political, economic and educational thought. His Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract are cornerstones in modern political and social thought. Rousseau's sentimental novel Julie, or the New Heloise (1761) was important to the development of preromanticism and romanticism in fiction. His Emile, or On Education (1762) is an educational treatise on the place of the individual in society. Rousseau's autobiographical writings—the posthumously published Confessions (composed in 1769), which initiated the modern autobiography, and the unfinished Reveries of a Solitary Walker (composed 1776–1778)—exemplified the late-18th-century "Age of Sensibility", and featured an increased focus on subjectivity and introspection that later characterized modern writing. Rousseau befriended fellow philosophy writer Denis Diderot in 1742, and would later write about Diderot's romantic troubles in his Confessions. During the period of the French Revolution, Rousseau was the most popular of the philosophers among members of the Jacobin Club. He was interred as a national hero in the Panthéon in Paris, in 1794, 16 years after his death.
- Birthplace: Geneva, Switzerland
- (Achille) Claude Debussy (French: [aʃil klod dəbysi]; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born to a family of modest means and little cultural involvement, Debussy showed enough musical talent to be admitted at the age of ten to France's leading music college, the Conservatoire de Paris. He originally studied the piano, but found his vocation in innovative composition, despite the disapproval of the Conservatoire's conservative professors. He took many years to develop his mature style, and was nearly 40 when he achieved international fame in 1902 with the only opera he completed, Pelléas et Mélisande. Debussy's orchestral works include Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894), Nocturnes (1897–1899) and Images (1905–1912). His music was to a considerable extent a reaction against Wagner and the German musical tradition. He regarded the classical symphony as obsolete and sought an alternative in his "symphonic sketches", La mer (1903–1905). His piano works include two books of Préludes and two of Études. Throughout his career he wrote mélodies based on a wide variety of poetry, including his own. He was greatly influenced by the Symbolist poetic movement of the later 19th century. A small number of works, including the early La Damoiselle élue and the late Le Martyre de saint Sébastien have important parts for chorus. In his final years, he focused on chamber music, completing three of six planned sonatas for different combinations of instruments. With early influences including Russian and far-eastern music, Debussy developed his own style of harmony and orchestral colouring, derided – and unsuccessfully resisted – by much of the musical establishment of the day. His works have strongly influenced a wide range of composers including Béla Bartók, Olivier Messiaen, George Benjamin, and the jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans. Debussy died from cancer at his home in Paris at the age of 55 after a composing career of a little more than 30 years.
- Birthplace: Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
- Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (French: [fʁɑ̃sis ʒɑ̃ maʁsɛl pulɛ̃k]; 7 January 1899 – 30 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist. His compositions include mélodies, solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music. Among the best-known are the piano suite Trois mouvements perpétuels (1919), the ballet Les biches (1923), the Concert champêtre (1928) for harpsichord and orchestra, the Organ Concerto (1938), the opera Dialogues des Carmélites (1957), and the Gloria (1959) for soprano, choir and orchestra. As the only son of a prosperous manufacturer Poulenc was expected to follow his father into the family firm, and he was not allowed to enrol at a music college. Largely self-educated musically, he studied with the pianist Ricardo Viñes, who became his mentor after the composer's parents died. Poulenc also made the acquaintance of Erik Satie, under whose tutelage he became one of a group of young composers known collectively as Les Six. In his early works Poulenc became known for his high spirits and irreverence. During the 1930s a much more serious side to his nature emerged, particularly in the religious music he composed from 1936 onwards, which he alternated with his more light-hearted works. In addition to composing, Poulenc was an accomplished pianist. He was particularly celebrated for his performing partnerships with the baritone Pierre Bernac (who also advised him in vocal writing) and the soprano Denise Duval, touring in Europe and America with each, and making many recordings. He was among the first composers to see the importance of the gramophone, and he recorded extensively from 1928 onwards. In his later years, and for decades after his death, Poulenc had a reputation, particularly in his native country, as a humorous, lightweight composer, and his religious music was often overlooked. During the 21st century more attention has been given to his serious works, with many new productions of Dialogues des Carmélites and La voix humaine worldwide, and numerous live and recorded performances of his songs and choral music.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Louis-Hector Berlioz (, French: [ɛktɔʁ bɛʁljoz]; 11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869) was a French Romantic composer. His output includes orchestral works such as the Symphonie fantastique and Harold in Italy, choral pieces including the Requiem and L'Enfance du Christ, his three operas Benvenuto Cellini, Les Troyens and Béatrice et Bénédict, and works of hybrid genres such as the "dramatic symphony" Roméo et Juliette and the "dramatic legend" La Damnation de Faust. The elder son of a provincial doctor, Berlioz was expected to follow his father into medicine, and he attended a Parisian medical college before defying his family by taking up music as a profession. His independence of mind and refusal to follow traditional rules and formulas put him at odds with the conservative musical establishment of Paris. He briefly moderated his style sufficiently to win France's premier music prize, the Prix de Rome, in 1830 but he learned little from the academics of the Paris Conservatoire. Opinion was divided for many years between those who thought him an original genius and those who viewed his music as lacking in form and coherence. At the age of twenty-two Berlioz fell in love with the Irish Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson, and he pursued her obsessively until she finally accepted him seven years later. Their marriage was happy at first but eventually foundered. Harriet inspired his first major success, the Symphonie fantastique, in which an idealised depiction of her occurs throughout. Berlioz completed three operas, the first of which, Benvenuto Cellini, was an outright failure. The second, the huge epic Les Troyens (The Trojans), was so large in scale that it was never staged in its entirety during his lifetime. His last opera, Béatrice et Bénédict – based on Shakespeare's comedy Much Ado About Nothing – was a success at its premiere but did not enter the regular operatic repertoire. Meeting only occasional success in France as a composer, Berlioz increasingly turned to conducting, in which he gained an international reputation. He was highly regarded in Germany, Britain and Russia both as a composer and as a conductor. To supplement his earnings he wrote musical journalism throughout much of his career; some of it has been preserved in book form, including his Treatise on Instrumentation (1844), which was influential in the 19th and 20th centuries. Berlioz died in Paris at the age of 65.
- Birthplace: La Côte-Saint-André, France
- Jean-Baptiste Lully (UK: , US: ; French: [ʒɑ̃ baˈtist lyˈli]; born Giovanni Battista Lulli, Italian: [ˈlulli]; 28 November [O.S. 18 November] 1632– 22 March 1687) was an Italian-born French composer, instrumentalist, and dancer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered a master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period. He became a French subject in 1661.
- Birthplace: Florence, Italy
- Georges Bizet (UK: BEE-zay, US: bee-ZAY, French: [ʒɔʁʒ bizɛ]; 25 October 1838 – 3 June 1875), registered at birth as Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer of the Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, which has become one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertoire. During a brilliant student career at the Conservatoire de Paris, Bizet won many prizes, including the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1857. He was recognised as an outstanding pianist, though he chose not to capitalise on this skill and rarely performed in public. Returning to Paris after almost three years in Italy, he found that the main Parisian opera theatres preferred the established classical repertoire to the works of newcomers. His keyboard and orchestral compositions were likewise largely ignored; as a result, his career stalled, and he earned his living mainly by arranging and transcribing the music of others. Restless for success, he began many theatrical projects during the 1860s, most of which were abandoned. Neither of his two operas that reached the stage in this time—Les pêcheurs de perles and La jolie fille de Perth—were immediately successful. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, during which Bizet served in the National Guard, he had little success with his one-act opera Djamileh, though an orchestral suite derived from his incidental music to Alphonse Daudet's play L'Arlésienne was instantly popular. The production of Bizet's final opera, Carmen, was delayed because of fears that its themes of betrayal and murder would offend audiences. After its premiere on 3 March 1875, Bizet was convinced that the work was a failure; he died of a heart attack three months later, unaware that it would prove a spectacular and enduring success. Bizet's marriage to Geneviève Halévy was intermittently happy and produced one son. After his death, his work, apart from Carmen, was generally neglected. Manuscripts were given away or lost, and published versions of his works were frequently revised and adapted by other hands. He founded no school and had no obvious disciples or successors. After years of neglect, his works began to be performed more frequently in the 20th century. Later commentators have acclaimed him as a composer of brilliance and originality whose premature death was a significant loss to French musical theatre.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Guillaume de Machaut (French: [gijom də maʃo]; sometimes spelled Machault; c. 1300 – April 1377) was a medieval French poet and composer. He is regarded by many musicologists as the greatest and most important composer of the 14th century. Machaut is one of the earliest composers on whom substantial biographical information is available, and Daniel Leech-Wilkinson called him "the last great poet who was also a composer". Well into the 15th century, Machaut's poetry was greatly admired and imitated by other poets, including Geoffrey Chaucer. Machaut composed in a wide range of styles and forms. He is a part of the musical movement known as the ars nova. Machaut helped develop the motet and secular song forms (particularly the lai and the formes fixes: rondeau, virelai and ballade). Machaut wrote the Messe de Nostre Dame, the earliest known complete setting of the Ordinary of the Mass attributable to a single composer. Some of his best-known rondeaus are "Ma fin est mon commencement" and "Rose, liz, printemps, verdure".
- Birthplace: Reims, France
- Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez CBE (French: [pjɛʁ lwi ʒozεf bulɛz]; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor, writer and creator of musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of the post-war classical music world. Born in Montbrison in the Loire department of France, the son of an engineer, Boulez studied at the Conservatoire de Paris with Olivier Messiaen, and privately with Andrée Vaurabourg and René Leibowitz. He began his professional career in the late 1940s as music director of the Renaud-Barrault theatre company in Paris. As a young composer in the 1950s he quickly became a leading figure in avant-garde music, playing an important role in the development of integral serialism and controlled chance music. From the 1970s onwards he pioneered the electronic transformation of instrumental music in real time. His tendency to revise earlier compositions meant that his body of completed works was relatively small, but it included pieces regarded by many as landmarks of twentieth-century music, such as Le Marteau sans maître, Pli selon pli and Répons. His uncompromising commitment to modernism and the trenchant, polemical tone in which he expressed his views on music led some to criticise him as a dogmatist. In parallel with his activities as a composer Boulez became one of the most prominent conductors of his generation. In a career lasting more than sixty years he held the positions of chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain and principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra. He made frequent guest appearances with many of the world's other great orchestras, including the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic and the London Symphony Orchestra. He was particularly known for his performances of the music of the first half of the twentieth century—including Debussy and Ravel, Stravinsky and Bartók, and the Second Viennese School—as well as that of his contemporaries, such as Ligeti, Berio and Carter. His work in the opera house included the Jahrhundertring—the production of Wagner's Ring cycle for the centenary of the Bayreuth Festival—and the world premiere of the three-act version of Alban Berg's Lulu. His recorded legacy is extensive. He founded a number of musical institutions in Paris, including the Domaine Musical, the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), the Ensemble Intercontemporain and the Cité de la Musique, as well as the Lucerne Festival Academy in Switzerland.
- Birthplace: France, Montbrison
- Éric Alfred Leslie Satie (French: [eʁik sati]; 17 May 1866 – 1 July 1925), who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. Satie was an influential artist in the late 19th- and early 20th-century Parisian avant-garde. His work was a precursor to later artistic movements such as minimalism, repetitive music, and the Theatre of the Absurd.An eccentric, Satie was introduced as a "gymnopedist" in 1887, shortly before writing his most famous compositions, the Gymnopédies. Later, he also referred to himself as a "phonometrician" (meaning "someone who measures sounds"), preferring this designation to that of "musician", after having been called "a clumsy but subtle technician" in a book on contemporary French composers published in 1911.In addition to his body of music, Satie was "a thinker with a gift of eloquence" who left a remarkable set of writings, having contributed work for a range of publications, from the dadaist 391 to the American culture chronicle Vanity Fair. Although in later life he prided himself on publishing his work under his own name, in the late 19th century he appears to have used pseudonyms such as Virginie Lebeau and François de Paule in some of his published writings.
- Birthplace: Honfleur, France
- Maurice Ravel worked on a variety of projects during his entertainment career. Ravel worked on a variety of projects during his early entertainment career, including "Anatomie des Liebesakts" (1970), "Angel Number 9" (1974) and "Erotikus" with Ed Fury (1973). He also contributed to "Passion" with Isabelle Huppert (1983), "The Eye of the Heart" (1978) starring Cecil Collins and "The Paolozzi Story" (1980). In the nineties, Ravel's music continued to appear on the silver screen, including in films like the Corey Haim action picture "Prayer of the Rollerboys" (1991), the Marco DiStefano comedy "The Return of Jesus" (1992) and "Un Coeur en Hiver" (1993) with Daniel Auteuil. Ravel's music was most recently used in the period drama "The Immigrant" (2014) with Marion Cotillard. Ravel had a number of different projects under his belt in the nineties and the early 2000s, including "Any Given Sunday" (1999), "Save the Last Dance" with Julia Stiles (2001) and "The Deep End" (2001) starring Tilda Swinton. His credits also expanded to "The Royal Tenenbaums" (2001) and "To the Left of the Father" with Selton Mello (2001).
- Birthplace: Ciboure, France
- Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse (French: [ɛdɡaːʁ viktɔːʁ aʃil ʃaʁl vaʁɛːz]; also spelled Edgar Varèse; December 22, 1883 – November 6, 1965) was a French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States. Varèse's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm. He coined the term "organized sound" in reference to his own musical aesthetic. Varèse's conception of music reflected his vision of "sound as living matter" and of "musical space as open rather than bounded". He conceived the elements of his music in terms of "sound-masses", likening their organization to the natural phenomenon of crystallization. Varèse thought that "to stubbornly conditioned ears, anything new in music has always been called noise", and he posed the question, "what is music but organized noises?"Although his complete surviving works only last about three hours, he has been recognised as an influence by several major composers of the late 20th century. Varèse saw potential in using electronic media for sound production, and his use of new instruments and electronic resources led to his being known as the "Father of Electronic Music" while Henry Miller described him as "The stratospheric Colossus of Sound".Varèse actively promoted performances of works by other 20th-century composers and founded the International Composers' Guild in 1921 and the Pan-American Association of Composers in 1926.
- Birthplace: France, Paris
- Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (French: [ʃaʁl kamij sɛ̃ sɑ̃(s)]; 9 October 1835 – 16 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic era. His best-known works include Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (1863), the Second Piano Concerto (1868), the First Cello Concerto (1872), Danse macabre (1874), the opera Samson and Delilah (1877), the Third Violin Concerto (1880), the Third ("Organ") Symphony (1886) and The Carnival of the Animals (1886). Saint-Saëns was a musical prodigy; he made his concert debut at the age of ten. After studying at the Paris Conservatoire he followed a conventional career as a church organist, first at Saint-Merri, Paris and, from 1858, La Madeleine, the official church of the French Empire. After leaving the post twenty years later, he was a successful freelance pianist and composer, in demand in Europe and the Americas. As a young man, Saint-Saëns was enthusiastic for the most modern music of the day, particularly that of Schumann, Liszt and Wagner, although his own compositions were generally within a conventional classical tradition. He was a scholar of musical history, and remained committed to the structures worked out by earlier French composers. This brought him into conflict in his later years with composers of the impressionist and dodecaphonic schools of music; although there were neoclassical elements in his music, foreshadowing works by Stravinsky and Les Six, he was often regarded as a reactionary in the decades around the time of his death. Saint-Saëns held only one teaching post, at the École de Musique Classique et Religieuse in Paris, and remained there for less than five years. It was nevertheless important in the development of French music: his students included Gabriel Fauré, among whose own later pupils was Maurice Ravel. Both of them were strongly influenced by Saint-Saëns, whom they revered as a genius.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Gabriel Urbain Fauré (French: [ɡabʁiɛl yʁbɛ̃ fɔʁe]; 12 May 1845 – 4 November 1924) was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century composers. Among his best-known works are his Pavane, Requiem, Sicilienne, nocturnes for piano and the songs "Après un rêve" and "Clair de lune". Although his best-known and most accessible compositions are generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his most highly regarded works in his later years, in a more harmonically and melodically complex style. Fauré was born into a cultured but not especially musical family. His talent became clear when he was a small boy. At the age of nine, he was sent to a music college in Paris, where he was trained to be a church organist and choirmaster. Among his teachers was Camille Saint-Saëns, who became a lifelong friend. After graduating from the college in 1865, Fauré earned a modest living as an organist and teacher, leaving him little time for composition. When he became successful in his middle age, holding the important posts of organist of the Église de la Madeleine and director of the Paris Conservatoire, he still lacked time for composing; he retreated to the countryside in the summer holidays to concentrate on composition. By his last years, Fauré was recognised in France as the leading French composer of his day. An unprecedented national musical tribute was held for him in Paris in 1922, headed by the president of the French Republic. Outside France, Fauré's music took decades to become widely accepted, except in Britain, where he had many admirers during his lifetime. Fauré's music has been described as linking the end of Romanticism with the modernism of the second quarter of the 20th century. When he was born, Chopin was still composing, and by the time of Fauré's death, jazz and the atonal music of the Second Viennese School were being heard. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, which describes him as the most advanced composer of his generation in France, notes that his harmonic and melodic innovations influenced the teaching of harmony for later generations. During the last twenty years of his life, he suffered from increasing deafness. In contrast with the charm of his earlier music, his works from this period are sometimes elusive and withdrawn in character, and at other times turbulent and impassioned.
- Birthplace: Pamiers, France
- Jacques Offenbach (, also US: , French: [ʒak ɔfɛnbak], German: [ˈɔfn̩bax] (listen); 20 June 1819 – 5 October 1880) was a German-French composer, cellist and impresario of the romantic period. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr. and Arthur Sullivan. His best-known works were continually revived during the 20th century, and many of his operettas continue to be staged in the 21st. The Tales of Hoffmann remains part of the standard opera repertory. Born in Cologne, the son of a synagogue cantor, Offenbach showed early musical talent. At the age of 14, he was accepted as a student at the Paris Conservatoire but found academic study unfulfilling and left after a year. From 1835 to 1855 he earned his living as a cellist, achieving international fame, and as a conductor. His ambition, however, was to compose comic pieces for the musical theatre. Finding the management of Paris' Opéra-Comique company uninterested in staging his works, in 1855 he leased a small theatre in the Champs-Élysées. There he presented a series of his own small-scale pieces, many of which became popular. In 1858, Offenbach produced his first full-length operetta, Orphée aux enfers ("Orpheus in the Underworld"), which was exceptionally well received and has remained one of his most played works. During the 1860s, he produced at least 18 full-length operettas, as well as more one-act pieces. His works from this period included La belle Hélène (1864), La Vie parisienne (1866), La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867) and La Périchole (1868). The risqué humour (often about sexual intrigue) and mostly gentle satiric barbs in these pieces, together with Offenbach's facility for melody, made them internationally known, and translated versions were successful in Vienna, London and elsewhere in Europe. Offenbach became associated with the Second French Empire of Napoleon III; the emperor and his court were genially satirised in many of Offenbach's operettas. Napoleon III personally granted him French citizenship and the Légion d'Honneur. With the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Offenbach found himself out of favour in Paris because of his imperial connections and his German birth. He remained successful in Vienna and London, however. He re-established himself in Paris during the 1870s, with revivals of some of his earlier favourites and a series of new works, and undertook a popular U.S. tour. In his last years he strove to finish The Tales of Hoffmann, but died before the premiere of the opera, which has entered the standard repertory in versions completed or edited by other musicians.
- Birthplace: Cologne, Germany
- Darius Milhaud (French: [daʁjys mijo]; 4 September 1892 – 22 June 1974) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and Brazilian music and make extensive use of polytonality. Milhaud is considered one of the key modernist composers.
- Birthplace: France, Aix-en-Provence
- Child prodigy who worked as a piano accompanist for singers including Juliette Greco and Bing Crosby and enjoyed success as composer and singer of popular music before turning his attention to the screen in the mid-1950s. His lushly melodic work graced the early films of New Wave directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and Agnes Varda and he has subsequently worked with international figures including Norman Jewison, Joseph Losey, Kon Ichikawa and Orson Welles. Legrand has also enjoyed a long and fruitful association with countryman Jacques Demy, composing and conducting the music for his internationally popular romantic musical "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (1964). Legrand won Oscars for his hit song "The Windmills of Your Mind" (1968) and his scores for "Summer of '42" (1971) and "Yentl" (1983). He made his feature directing debut with "Five Days in June" (1989), an autobiographical war drama set in Normandy circa 1944. Son of Raymond Legrand (1908-74), a French film composer of the 1940s and 50s.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Jean-Michel André Jarre (French: [ʒɑ̃ miʃɛl ɑ̃dʁe ʒaʁ]; born 24 August 1948) is a French composer, performer and record producer. He is a pioneer in the electronic, ambient and new-age genres, and known for organising outdoor spectacles featuring his music, vast laser displays and fireworks. Jarre was raised in Lyon by his mother and grandparents and trained on the piano. From an early age, he was introduced to a variety of art forms, including street performers, jazz musicians and the artist Pierre Soulages. He played guitar in a band, but his musical style was perhaps most heavily influenced by Pierre Schaeffer, a pioneer of musique concrète at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales. His first mainstream success was the 1976 album Oxygène. Recorded in a makeshift studio at his home, the album sold an estimated 12 million copies. Oxygène was followed in 1978 by Équinoxe, and in 1979, Jarre performed to a record-breaking audience of more than a million people at the Place de la Concorde, a record he has since broken three times. More albums were to follow, but his 1979 concert served as a blueprint for his future performances around the world. Several of his albums have been released to coincide with large-scale outdoor events, and he is now perhaps as well known as a performer as he is as a musician. As of 2004, Jarre had sold an estimated 80 million albums. He was the first Western musician officially invited to perform in the People's Republic of China and holds the world record for the largest-ever audience at an outdoor event for his Moscow concert on 6 September 1997, which was attended by 3.5 million people.
- Birthplace: France, Lyon
- One of the most prolific film composers of the late 20th Century, Lyon-born Maurice Jarre had been crafting film underscores for a decade when he came to international prominence in 1962 with his Oscar-winning score for the sweeping David Lean-directed epic "Lawrence of Arabia."
- Birthplace: Lyon, Rhône, France
- Charles-François Gounod (; French: [ʃaʁl fʁɑ̃swa ɡuno]; 17 June 1818 – 17 or 18 October 1893) was a French composer, best known for his Ave Maria, based on a work by Bach, as well as his opera Faust. Another opera by Gounod that is still performed today is Roméo et Juliette. Gounod died at Saint-Cloud in 1893, after a final revision of his twelve operas. His funeral took place ten days later at the Church of the Madeleine, with Camille Saint-Saëns playing the organ and Gabriel Fauré conducting. He was buried at the Cimetière d'Auteuil in Paris.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Charles-Valentin Alkan (French: [ʃaʁl valɑ̃tɛ̃ alkɑ̃]; 30 November 1813 – 29 March 1888) was a French-Jewish composer and virtuoso pianist. At the height of his fame in the 1830s and 1840s he was, alongside his friends and colleagues Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt, among the leading pianists in Paris, a city in which he spent virtually his entire life. Alkan earned many awards at the Conservatoire de Paris, which he entered before he was six. His career in the salons and concert halls of Paris was marked by his occasional long withdrawals from public performance, for personal reasons. Although he had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances in the Parisian artistic world, including Eugène Delacroix and George Sand, from 1848 he began to adopt a reclusive life style, while continuing with his compositions – virtually all of which are for the keyboard. During this period he published, among other works, his collections of large-scale studies in all the major keys (Op. 35) and all the minor keys (Op. 39). The latter includes his Symphony for Solo Piano (Op. 39, nos. 4–7) and Concerto for Solo Piano (Op. 39, nos. 8–10), which are often considered among his masterpieces and are of great musical and technical complexity. Alkan emerged from self-imposed retirement in the 1870s to give a series of recitals that were attended by a new generation of French musicians. Alkan's attachment to his Jewish origins is displayed both in his life and his work. He was the first composer to incorporate Jewish melodies in art music. Fluent in Hebrew and Greek, he devoted much time to a complete new translation of the Bible into French. This work, like many of his musical compositions, is now lost. Alkan never married, but his presumed son Élie-Miriam Delaborde was, like Alkan, a virtuoso performer on both the piano and the pedal piano, and edited a number of the elder composer's works. Following his death (which according to persistent but unfounded legend was caused by a falling bookcase) Alkan's music became neglected, supported by only a few musicians including Ferruccio Busoni, Egon Petri and Kaikhosru Sorabji. From the late 1960s onwards, led by Raymond Lewenthal and Ronald Smith, many pianists have recorded his music and brought it back into the repertoire.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Arthur Higelin (27 March 1966), better known under his stage name Arthur H [aʁtyʁ ɑːʃ], is a pianist, songwriter and singer. He is best known in France for his live performances—four of his albums were recorded live.
- Birthplace: France, Paris
- Vladimir Cosma is a Romania-born composer with a long and illustrious history of collaborating with some of French cinema's greatest auteurs. One of his first musical compositions for film was for Yves Robert's "Alexander," a movie about a man worked like a dog by his overbearing wife until her death sets him free. Cosma and Robert worked together several times, including on adaptations of Marcel Pagnol's autobiographical novels "My Father's Glory" and "My Mother's Castle," for both of which Cosma was nominated for a César for best music. Cosma has dabbled in a vast array of musical genres, including jazz, folk, and classical. The depth and breadth of his work is even more impressive when one considers the diverse musical traditions he has explored in his film music career. In 1983, Cosma was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque at Cannes in honor of his entire body of work.
- Birthplace: Bucharest, Romania
- Era (styled as +eRa+, acronym for “Enminential Rhythm of the Ancestors”) is a New-Age music project by French composer Eric Lévi. They use lyrics (by Guy Protheroe) which, although similar to Greek or Latin, are, in fact, deliberately devoid of any exact meaning. Musically, the project blends Gregorian chants with modern elements and genres, especially rock, pop and electronic music.Era’s first album, Era, was released in 1997 and became a worldwide success, helped by its first single “Ameno”. It sold over 6 million copies and became the most exported French album at the time. It was followed by Era 2 in 2000 and The Mass in 2003. In 2008 the project saw a significant departure from its previous themes and presented a more electronic soundscape with Arabic influences in its fourth album, Reborn. In the following two years, Era released Classics and Classics 2, which consisted in contemporary reinterpretations of classical works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Giuseppe Verdi, Antonio Vivaldi, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, amongst others. In 2013, Era released its latest work, an album in collaboration with French singer and actress Arielle Dombasle entitled Arielle Dombasle by Era. The project has sold more than 12 million albums.
Jean René Désiré Françaix (French: [fʁɑ̃sɛ]; 23 May 1912 in Le Mans – 25 September 1997 in Paris) was a French neoclassical composer, pianist, and orchestrator, known for his prolific output and vibrant style.- Birthplace: Le Mans, France
- Acclaimed international composer who first gained prominence with the emergence of the French New Wave. Delerue's prolific output includes ballets, operas, chamber pieces, orchestral works, a series of vocal melodies for the poems of Paul Eluard, and music for TV and plays.
- Birthplace: Roubaix, France
- Henri Constant Gabriel Pierné (16 August 1863 – 17 July 1937) was a French composer, conductor, and organist.
- Birthplace: Metz, France
- Amédée-Ernest Chausson (French: [ʃosɔ̃]; 20 January 1855 – 10 June 1899) was a French romantic composer who died just as his career was beginning to flourish.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Olivier Alary (born 1975) is a French musician who is also known under the title of his musical project Ensemble. A native of Toulouse, France, Olivier Alary is a Montreal-based musician and composer who has released his own recordings, as well as composing for film and exhibitions. A former student of architecture, Alary created Ensemble in 1998 as a musical persona through which to explore the encounter between melodic noise and disjointed pop. He moved to London to study music and in 2000 he released his first album Sketch Proposals under the name Ensemble with Rephlex Records. Sketch Proposals caught the attention of Björk, and Alary's remixes of three of her songs – "Sun in My Mouth", "Cocoon" and "Mouth's Cradle" – were released as B-sides. He went on to co-write the song "Desired Constellation" with Björk on her 2004 album Medúlla. Alary's follow-up album, the self-titled Ensemble, blends symphonic wall-of-sound with intimate folk-pop vocals, and was released in 2006. It features vocal performances by Chan Marshall (of Cat Power fame), Lou Barlow and Mileece; drums by Adam Pierce; and orchestral arrangements by Johannes Malfatti, performed by Germany's Babelsberg Film Orchestra. Ensemble's third album Excerpts was released in January 2011. A beautiful, sophisticated record of orchestrated pop songs on the theme of fictional and false memories, the album features collaborators Johannes Malfatti and vocalist Darcy Conroy. Olivier has also composed music for several exhibitions at London's Victoria & Albert Museum; contributed to an installation by Doug Aitken at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris; and has received an honorary mention at the Ars Electronica Festival for his project Chlorgeschlecht. He has also collaborated with photographer Nick Knight. Since 2007, he has also provided soundtrack for several feature-length films and documentaries, some of which have received prestigious awards and screenings in Europe, the US and China.
- Birthplace: Toulouse, France
- Jean-Jacques Perrey (French: [pɛʁɛ]; 20 January 1929 – 4 November 2016) was a French electronic music producer and was an early pioneer in the genre. He was a member of the electronic music duo Perrey and Kingsley.
- Birthplace: France
- Paul Abraham Dukas (French: [dykas]; 1 October 1865 – 17 May 1935) was a French composer, critic, scholar and teacher. A studious man, of retiring personality, he was intensely self-critical, and he abandoned and destroyed many of his compositions. His best known work is the orchestral piece The Sorcerer's Apprentice (L'apprenti sorcier), the fame of which has eclipsed that of his other surviving works. Among these are the opera Ariane et Barbe-bleue, a symphony, two substantial works for solo piano, and a ballet, La Péri. At a time when French musicians were divided into conservative and progressive factions, Dukas adhered to neither but retained the admiration of both. His compositions were influenced by composers including Beethoven, Berlioz, Franck, d'Indy and Debussy. In tandem with his composing career, Dukas worked as a music critic, contributing regular reviews to at least five French journals. Later in his life he was appointed professor of composition at the Conservatoire de Paris and the École Normale de Musique; his pupils included Maurice Duruflé, Olivier Messiaen, Manuel Ponce, and Joaquín Rodrigo.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Thomas Bangalter (French pronunciation: [tɔma bɑ̃ɡaltɛʁ]; born 3 January 1975) is a French musician, record producer, DJ and composer. He is best known as one half of the French house music duo Daft Punk, alongside Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo. He has recorded and released music as a member of the trio Stardust, the duo Together, and as a solo artist including compositions for films such as Irréversible. Bangalter's work has influenced a wide range of artists, many of whom are involved in different genres.Thomas Bangalter owns the music label Roulé. Outside of music production, his credits include film director and cinematographer.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer (English pronunciation: (listen), French pronunciation: [ʃɛfɛʁ]; 14 August 1910 – 19 August 1995) was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist and acoustician. His innovative work in both the sciences—particularly communications and acoustics—and the various arts of music, literature and radio presentation after the end of World War II, as well as his anti-nuclear activism and cultural criticism garnered him widespread recognition in his lifetime. Amongst the vast range of works and projects he undertook, Schaeffer is most widely and currently recognized for his accomplishments in electronic and experimental music, at the core of which stands his role as the chief developer of a unique and early form of avant-garde music known as musique concrète. The genre emerged in Europe from the utilization of new music technology developed in the post-war era, following the advance of electroacoustic and acousmatic music. Schaeffer's writings (which include written and radio-narrated essays, biographies, short novels, a number of musical treatises and several plays) are often oriented towards his development of the genre, as well as the theoretics and philosophy of music in general.Today, Schaeffer is considered one of the most influential experimental, electroacoustic and subsequently electronic musicians, having been the first composer to utilize a number of contemporary recording and sampling techniques that are now used worldwide by nearly all record production companies. His collaborative endeavors are considered milestones in the histories of electronic and experimental music.
- Birthplace: France, Nancy
- Gilbert Becaud, a talented musician, produced music for many Hollywood productions. Becaud began his entertainment career with his music featured in films like the Brigitte Bardot comedy "Babette Goes to War" (1960), "Le Diable et les Dix Commandements" (1962) and "Bruno - Sunday's Child" (1968). His music also appeared in "La Maison Sous les Arbres" (1971) with Faye Dunaway. Though known first for his music, Becaud also acted in "Un Homme Libre" (1973) and the drama "Toute une vie" (1974) with Marthe Keller. Becaud was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for "The Jazz Singer" in 1980. He followed this honor with songs in the drama sequel "The Color of Money" (1986) with Paul Newman, the comedy "Buster" (1988) with Phil Collins and the comedic drama "Afterglow" (1997) with Nick Nolte. He also appeared in the Al Pacino crime drama "Donnie Brasco" (1997). Becaud's music was also featured in the Baltasar Kormakur drama "Devil's Island" (1999), the Pierre Arditi dramatic comedy "Same Old Song" (1999) and the Jason Biggs comedy "Saving Silverman" (2001). His music was also featured in "Romance and Cigarettes" (2007) with James Gandolfini and the drama "Roman De Gare" (2008) with Dominique Pinon. Becaud's music was most recently featured in the Madeline Carroll dramatic adaptation "Flipped" (2010).
- Birthplace: Toulon, France
- Daniel François Esprit Auber (French: [danjɛl fʁɑ̃swa ɛspʁi obɛːʁ]; 29 January 1782 – 12/13 May 1871) was a French composer.
- Birthplace: Caen, France
Marc-André Dalbavie
Age: 63Marc-André Dalbavie is a French composer. He had his first music lessons at age 6 He attended the Conservatoire de Paris where he studied composition with Marius Constant and orchestration with Pierre Boulez. In 1985 he joined the research department of IRCAM where he studied digital synthesis, computer assisted composition and spectral analysis. In the early 1990s he moved to Berlin. Currently he lives in the town of St. Cyprien and teaches orchestration at Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris. In 1994 he was awarded the Rome Prize. The same year he was one of three composers who won the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize. In 1998, the Cleveland Orchestra appointed him the composer-in-residence for two years. In 2004, he was made a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.- Birthplace: Neuilly-sur-Seine, Paris, France
- Édouard-Victoire-Antoine Lalo (27 January 1823 – 22 April 1892) was a French composer. Easily his most celebrated piece is his Symphonie espagnole, which consists of five movements and is a popular work in the standard repertoire for violin and orchestra.
- Birthplace: Lille, France
Mathias Malzieu
Age: 50Mathias Malzieu (born 1974), the lead singer of the French band Dionysos, co-founded the group in 1993 when he lived in Valence in Drôme (Occitania). Three of his school-friends (Eric Serra Tosio, Michael Ponton and Guillaume Garidel), comprised the original band membership.- Birthplace: France, Montpellier
- Georges Auric (French: [ɔʁik]; 15 February 1899 – 23 July 1983) was a French composer, born in Lodève, Hérault. He was considered one of Les Six, a group of artists informally associated with Jean Cocteau and Erik Satie. Before he turned 20 he had orchestrated and written incidental music for several ballets and stage productions. He also had a distinguished career as a film composer.
- Birthplace: Lodève, France
- Electrosexual is a French electronic musician, composer, performer, record producer and music video director living in Berlin.
Elodie Lauten
Dec. at 63 (1950-2014)Elodie Lauten was a French-born American composer described as postminimalist or a microtonalist.- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Émilie Simon (French pronunciation: [emili simɔ̃]; born 1978 in Montpellier, Occitanie, France) is a French singer, songwriter and composer of electronic music.
- Birthplace: France, Montpellier
- Michel Colombier (May 23, 1939 – November 14, 2004) was a French composer, songwriter, arranger, and conductor. In a career that spanned over four decades, he composed over 100 film and television scores, as well as chamber music, ballets, and concept albums. He won a César Award for Best Original Music for Élisa, and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and three Grammy Awards.
- Birthplace: Lyon, France
- Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (UK: , US: , French: [ɔlivje mɛsjɑ̃]; December 10, 1908 – April 27, 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically and melodically he employs a system he called modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from the systems of material generated by his early compositions and improvisations. He wrote music for chamber ensembles and orchestra, vocal music, as well as for solo organ and piano, and also experimented with the use of novel electronic instruments developed in Europe during his lifetime. He travelled widely and wrote works inspired by diverse influences ranging from Japanese music, the landscape of Bryce Canyon in Utah and the life of St. Francis of Assisi. He said he perceived colours when he heard certain musical chords (a phenomenon known as synaesthesia in its literal manifestation); combinations of these colours, he said, were important in his compositional process. For a short period Messiaen experimented with the parametrisation associated with "total serialism", in which field he is often cited as an innovator. His style absorbed many global musical influences such as Indonesian gamelan (tuned percussion often features prominently in his orchestral works). Messiaen entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 11 and was taught by Paul Dukas, Maurice Emmanuel, Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupré, among others. He was appointed organist at the Église de la Sainte-Trinité, Paris, in 1931, a post held until his death. He taught at the Schola Cantorum de Paris during the 1930s. On the fall of France in 1940, Messiaen was made a prisoner of war, during which time he composed his Quatuor pour la fin du temps ("Quartet for the end of time") for the four available instruments—piano, violin, cello and clarinet. The piece was first performed by Messiaen and fellow prisoners for an audience of inmates and prison guards. He was appointed professor of harmony soon after his release in 1941, and professor of composition in 1966 at the Paris Conservatoire, positions he held until his retirement in 1978. His many distinguished pupils included Iannis Xenakis, George Benjamin, Alexander Goehr, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Yvonne Loriod, who became his second wife. He found birdsong fascinating, notating bird songs worldwide and incorporating birdsong transcriptions into his music. His innovative use of colour, his conception of the relationship between time and music, and his use of birdsong are among the features that make Messiaen's music distinctive.
- Birthplace: France, Avignon
- Eugène Marie Henri Fouques Duparc (21 January 1848 – 12 February 1933) was a French composer of the late Romantic period.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Juliette Nadia Boulanger (French: [ʒy.ljɛt na.dja bu.lɑ̃.ʒe]; 16 September 1887 – 22 October 1979) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. She is notable for having taught many of the leading composers and musicians of the 20th century. She also performed occasionally as a pianist and organist.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire but, believing that she had no particular talent as a composer, she gave up writing music and became a teacher. In that capacity, she influenced generations of young composers, especially those from the United States and other English-speaking countries. Among her students were those who became leading composers, soloists, arrangers, and conductors, including Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson, Darius Milhaud, Elliott Carter, David Diamond, Dinu Lipatti, Igor Markevitch, İdil Biret, Daniel Barenboim, John Eliot Gardiner, Philip Glass, Lalo Schifrin, Astor Piazzolla, Quincy Jones, and Michel Legrand. Her female students, whose chances in the 20th century for recognition were significantly lower than that of the men, include Grażyna Bacewicz, and notable American composers such as Louise Talma and Elaine Bearer. Boulanger taught in the US and England, working with music academies including the Juilliard School, the Yehudi Menuhin School, the Longy School, the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music, but her principal base for most of her life was her family's flat in Paris, where she taught for most of the seven decades from the start of her career until her death at the age of 92. Boulanger was the first woman to conduct many major orchestras in America and Europe, including the BBC Symphony, Boston Symphony, Hallé, New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia orchestras. She conducted several world premieres, including works by Copland and Stravinsky.
- Birthplace: France, Paris
- Michel Paul Philippot (2 February 1925 – 28 July 1996) was a French composer, mathematician, acoustician, musicologist, aesthetician, broadcaster, and educator.
- Birthplace: Verzy, France
- Joseph Kosma (22 October 1905 – 7 August 1969) was a Hungarian-French composer.
- Birthplace: Budapest, Hungary
- Marcel Dupré (French pronunciation: [maʁsɛl dypre]) (3 May 1886 – 30 May 1971) was a French organist, composer, and pedagogue.
- Birthplace: Rouen, France
- Maurice Duruflé (French: [dyʁyfle]; 11 January 1902 – 16 June 1986) was a French composer, organist, and teacher.
- Birthplace: Louviers, France
- Jean Francisque-Étienne Martinon (usually known simply as Jean Martinon (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ maʁtinɔ̃]); 10 January 1910 – 1 March 1976) was a French conductor and composer.
- Birthplace: Lyon, France
- Claude-Michel Schönberg (born 6 July 1944 in Vannes) is a French record producer, actor, singer, songwriter, and musical theatre composer, best known for his collaborations with lyricist Alain Boublil. Major works include La Révolution Française (1973), Les Misérables (1980), Miss Saigon (1989), Martin Guerre (1996), The Pirate Queen (2006), and Marguerite (2008).
- Birthplace: Vannes, France
- Born in Algeria to musician parents, Martial Solal began studying the piano at the age of 6. By 1950, a 23-year-old Solal had moved to Paris, begun collaborating with well-known jazz musicians, and embarked on his recording career. A talented performer, Solal gained international attention and spent much of the 1960s playing throughout Europe and the United States. He has recorded over 25 jazz albums, including "Jazz a Juan," his 1974 collaboration with American alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, and "Live at the Village Vanguard," a recording of his 2001 New York performance with François Moutin and Bill Stewart. Solal has composed the musical scores for over 20 films, and is perhaps best known for his score of the 1960 crime drama "Breathless," which was New-Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard's first feature film. Other notable scores by Solal include the 1960 French comedy "It Happened All Night" and the 1962 Finnish dramedy "The Flamboyant Sex." After composing the score for the 1983 drama "Ballade à Blanc," Solal took a 17-year break from writing film scores, instead refocusing on his performing and recording career, producing nine albums in that time. He finally returned to film in 2000 with his score for director Bertrand Blier's comedy "Actors."
- Birthplace: Algiers, France
- Jean-Luc Ponty (born 29 September 1942) is a French jazz violinist and composer.
- Birthplace: Avranches, France
- Georges Diran Garvarentz (Armenian: Ժորժ Տիրան Կառվարենց, 1 April 1932 - 19 March 1993) was an Armenian-French composer, noted for his music for films and Charles Aznavour's songs.
- Birthplace: Athens, Greece
- Charles-Marie Jean Albert Widor (21 February 1844 – 12 March 1937) was a French organist, composer and teacher, most notable for his ten organ symphonies.
- Birthplace: Lyon, France
- Quentin Dupieux (French pronunciation: [kɑ̃tɛ̃ dypjø], born 14 April 1974), better known by his stage name Mr. Oizo (French pronunciation: [məsjø wazo]), is a French electronic musician, DJ and film director, best known for his 1999 single "Flat Beat". His pseudonym is a corruption of the French oiseau, meaning "bird". He is signed to Ed Banger Records and Brainfeeder. Dupieux uses his full name for his cinematographic work, Mr. Oizo being only used for his musical work.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Henri-Gustave Casadesus (30 September 1879, Paris – 31 May 1947, Paris) was a violist, viola d'amore player, and music publisher.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Armand Amar (born 1953) is a French composer, who grew up in Morocco. He won the 2010 César Award for Best Music for Le Concert (Radu Mihăileanu).
- Birthplace: Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine
- Louis Guglielmi (3 April 1916 – 4 April 1991), known by his nom de plume Louiguy (French pronunciation: [lwi.ɡi]), was a Spanish-born French musician of Italian extraction. He wrote the melody for Édith Piaf's lyrics of "La Vie en Rose" and the Latin jazz composition "Cerisier rose et pommier blanc", a popular song written in 1950, made famous in English as "Cherry Pink (and Apple Blossom White)", which was recast as a resounding mambo hit for Pérez Prado. Guglielmi was born in Barcelona. He studied music at the Conservatoire de Paris in the same class as Maurice Baquet, Henri Betti, Paul Bonneau and Henri Dutilleux. He created almost three dozen film scores, beginning in 1946 with La Rose de la mer and including Mourir d'aimer (1970; in English To Die of Love). Among the last was the score for Jean Gabin's final gangster flick, Verdict (1974). He died in Vence, one day after his 75th birthday.
- Birthplace: Barcelona, Spain
- Julien Lourau (born 3/2/1970) is a French jazz saxophonist. He is the son of sociologist René Lourau. Julien Lourau made his début in the group Trash Corporation with guitarist Noël Akchoté and pianist Bojan Zulfikarpasic. He also founded the group Olympic Gramofon with Sébastien Martel, Vincent Ségal, Eric Löhrer, Cyril Atef, and DJ Shalom. In 1992, Julien Lourau won the first soloist prize in La Défense and went on to set up his Groove Gang.In 1999, he experimented with electronic music for his album Gambit which attracted a following from young French people and led to a number of successful concerts. He won that year's jazz trophy at the "Victoires de la Musique" awards. He returned to a more traditional jazz in 2002 with the album The rise, regarded as his most mature album. 2007 saw the release of Julien Lourau vs Rumbabierta which combines Lourau's avant-garde jazz with Afro-Cuban sounds. Julien Lourau also collaborated with the hip hop dance collectif le Groove Gang in a show untitled « Come fly with us ». By doing so, he encountered the French hip hop dance pioneer Bintou Demébélé, who was at the moment a member of the Groove Gang. Julien Lourau will thereafter invite her to dance at some of his concerts.His composition includes forms absorbed from Latin, African, Caribbean and European folk music.
- Birthplace: Rambouillet, France
- Stéphane Raoul Pugno (23 June 1852 – 3 January 1914 [O.S. 21 December 1913]) was a French composer, teacher, organist, and pianist known for his playing of Mozart's works.
- Birthplace: Montrouge, France
- Éric Serra has composed the music for nearly everything directed by Luc Besson. His feature film collaboration with the famous French action director began in 1983 with the post-apocalyptic "Le Dernier Combat (The Last Battle)." Serra also laid down the music for such cult classics as "La Femme Nikita," a romantic thriller about a street junkie given a second chance as a government assassin, and "The Professional," the intimate portrait of a hit man and the orphaned girl he adopts. Serra had less success with American collaborators, most notably with the critically panned score for the James Bond film "GoldenEye." Nevertheless, Serra's association with Luc Besson has produced a prolific body of work, including such American films as the science fiction doomsday tale "The Fifth Element" and "The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc," a bloody account of France's most famous heretic-turned-saint. Serra has also had substantial success as a songwriter, creating original songs for the Luc Besson films "Subway," a blackmail-fueled thriller, and "The Big Blue," a tale of romance and diving.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Philippe Sarde (born 21 June 1948) is a French film composer. Considered among the most versatile and talented French film composers of his generation, Sarde has scored over two hundred films, film shorts, and television mini-series. He received an Academy Award nomination for Tess (1979), and twelve César Award nominations, winning for Barocco (1976) and The Judge and the Assassin (1976). In 1993, Sarde received the Joseph Plateau Music Award.
- Birthplace: Neuilly-sur-Seine, France
- Alexandre Clément Léon Joseph Luigini (9 March 1850 – 29 July 1906) was a French composer and conductor, especially active in the opera house. As a composer, he is now remembered almost solely for his Ballet égyptien.
- Birthplace: Lyon, France
- Diego Masson (born 21 June 1935) is a French conductor, composer, and percussionist. The son of artist André Masson and brother of the singer and actor Luís Masson, Diego Masson was born in Tossa de Mar, Spain. He studied piano and composition at the Paris Conservatoire. Upon graduation, he joined the Domaine Musical as percussionist and began studying conducting with the group's director, Pierre Boulez. In 1966 he formed Musique Vivante, a group specializing in contemporary music which he still directs (Griffiths and Goodwin 2001). Musique Vivante has introduced many important compositions by French and foreign composers, in particular the music of Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen. In 1969 Masson conducted the world première of Stockhausen's Stop, which is dedicated to him, and the group also took part in the premières of "Setz die Segel zur Sonne" from Aus den sieben Tagen and the 1972 version of Momente (Griffiths and Goodwin 2001). In addition to conducting specialist new-music groups like the Asko Ensemble, Xenakis Ensemble, the Composers Ensemble, Klangforum Wien, the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Alternance, Ensemble Modern, and Musik Fabrik, he has worked with major orchestras including all the BBC Orchestras, Berlin Symphony Orchestra, Stavanger Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Collegium Academicum of Geneva, Helsinki Philharmonic, Bergen Philharmonic, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra, the Sydney and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras, the New Zealand Symphony, and the Hong Kong Philharmonic (Anon. 2013). He is also an acclaimed conductor of opera and ballet. He was music director of the Ballet-Théâtre Contemporain of Amiens from its formation in 1968. In 1972 it moved to Angers, where it was combined with the opera company as the Théâtre Musical d'Angers under Masson's direction. He left in 1975 to become Music Director of Marseille Opera (until 1981) where, amongst other things, he conducted a Ring cycle. He has been guest conductor with opera companies including Opera North, Scottish Opera and the Aspen Festival. He co-conducted (with Patrick Bailey) the UK premiere of Luigi Nono's Prometeo at the Royal Festival Hall in London on 9 and 10 May 2008 (Finch 2008; Norris 2008). Masson has also worked extensively with youth orchestras: in the UK regularly at Trinity College of Music and the Royal Northern College of Music, and as guest conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of Chetham's School of Music; in the US with the Juilliard Orchestra; and in Australia with the Australian Youth Orchestra. He held conducting masterclasses every year at Dartington International Summer School from 1983 to 2010. His activities as a composer and arranger were mainly from the early part of his career and included film scores composed for Équivoque 1900 (1966), and two Louis Malle projects, the "William Wilson" segment of the Edgar Allan Poe triptych Histoires extraordinaires (1968), and Black Moon (1975), for which he adapted music by Wagner. He was music director for the latter, as well as for the 1996 French/German television Beethoven biopic La Musique de l'amour: Un amour inachevé.
- Birthplace: Tossa de Mar, Spain
- Clément Philibert Léo Delibes (French: [klemɑ̃ filibɛʁ leo dəlib]; 21 February 1836 – 16 January 1891) was a French composer of the Romantic era (1815–1910), who specialised in ballets, operas, and other works for the stage. His most notable works include the ballets Coppélia (1870) and Sylvia (1876), as well as the operas Le roi l'a dit (1873) and Lakmé (1883).
- Birthplace: La Flèche, France
- Jean-Philippe Rameau (French: [ʒɑ̃filip ʁamo]; (1683-09-25)25 September 1683 – (1764-09-12)12 September 1764) was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the 18th century. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer for the harpsichord of his time, alongside François Couperin.Little is known about Rameau's early years. It was not until the 1720s that he won fame as a major theorist of music with his Treatise on Harmony (1722) and also in the following years as a composer of masterpieces for the harpsichord, which circulated throughout Europe. He was almost 50 before he embarked on the operatic career on which his reputation chiefly rests today. His debut, Hippolyte et Aricie (1733), caused a great stir and was fiercely attacked by the supporters of Lully's style of music for its revolutionary use of harmony. Nevertheless, Rameau's pre-eminence in the field of French opera was soon acknowledged, and he was later attacked as an "establishment" composer by those who favoured Italian opera during the controversy known as the Querelle des Bouffons in the 1750s. Rameau's music had gone out of fashion by the end of the 18th century, and it was not until the 20th that serious efforts were made to revive it. Today, he enjoys renewed appreciation with performances and recordings of his music ever more frequent.
- Birthplace: Dijon, France
- Jules Auguste Garcin [Salomon] (11 July 1830 – 10 October 1896) was a French violinist, conductor and composer of the 19th century. He was born in Bourges. His maternal grandfather, Joseph Garcin, was director of a travelling company playing opéra comique in the central and southern provinces of France. Having entered the Paris Conservatoire in adolescence, studying under Clavel and Alard, Garcin took the premier prix for violin in 1853, and entered the Opéra orchestra in 1856. He became solo violinist, then third conductor in 1871 and finally chief conductor in 1885. His long and successful teaching career at the Conservatoire de Paris began in 1875. Among his notable students were the child prodigy Henri Marteau (1874–1934) and Jules Boucherit (1877–1962). Garcin’s association with the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire began in 1860, again as orchestral and then as solo violinist.In 1885 he was elected principal conductor of the Conservatoire concerts. In this post he actively promoted German choral and symphonic masterpieces, from Bach’s Mass in B minor (in 1891) to works of Brahms and Wagner (Brahms’s music was then the object of much adverse criticism in Paris during the Franco-Prussian War). He was a founder-member of the Société Nationale de Musique in 1871. He wrote some music (including a violin concerto and viola concertino), a certain amount of which was published by Lemoine (some now in US-Bp). Franck’s Symphony in D minor premiere took place on February 17, 1889 at the Paris Conservatoire under the direction of Jules Garcin. This Symphony was dedicated to Henri Duparc, who was a member of “la bande á Franck” at the Conservatoire, along with Vincent D’Indy, Emmanuel Chabrier, and Paul Dukas. Three years later in 1892, Garcin retired and relinquished the post due to illness, but continued teaching. He died in Paris in 1896. Performed on violins by Antonio Stradivari "Il Cremonese" 1715 (now known as the Ex-Joachim), Antonio Stradivari, Cremona 1731 (now known as the Ex-Garcin), as well as "Le Messie" copy of 1868 by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume.
- Adolphe Charles Adam (French: [adolf adɑ̃]; 24 July 1803 – 3 May 1856) was a French composer and music critic. A prolific composer of operas and ballets, he is best known today for his ballets Giselle (1841) and Le corsaire (1856, his last work), his operas Le postillon de Lonjumeau (1836), Le toréador (1849) and Si j'étais roi (1852) and his Christmas carol Minuit, chrétiens! (1844), later set to different English lyrics and widely sung as "O Holy Night" (1847). Adam was a noted teacher, who taught Delibes and other influential composers.
- Birthplace: France, Paris
- Carlos Salzedo (6 April 1885 – 17 August 1961) was a French harpist, pianist, composer and conductor. His compositions brought a new modernist sensibility to the virtuoso repertoire of the instrument. He influenced many composers with his new ideas for the harp. He taught scores of students every year at the Curtis Institute of Music, at the Institute of Musical Art and in his private studio in New York City, and especially at his famed summer harp colony in Seal Harbor, then in Camden, Maine, which was featured in Life magazine. His students became members of many orchestras and faculty members in many influential music schools (Boston University, Mannes College of Music, Manhattan School of Music, University of Washington, to name but a few. He toured the nation with the Trio de Lutece for several years, and with his Salzedo Harp Ensemble, and later, the Salzedo Concerto Ensemble. He performed concertos with the major orchestras in the USA as well. Salzedo started studying at the Paris Conservatory at age nine and won the premier prix in harp and piano when he was just 16. He started his solo recital career at age 18, and moved to the United States of America six years later, playing harp with the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. He toured extensively with the Trio de Lutèce, where he played harp with Georges Barrère, flute and Paul Kéfer (later, Horace Britt), cello. After being drafted into the French Army during World War I, Salzedo returned to the United States and continued touring with the trio. He developed a method of using gestures in his harp playing, in consultation with dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. He led the Salzedo Harp Ensemble with his students, and also a harp trio. They frequently performed in concert with singers from the Metropolitan Opera, such as Margarete Matzenauer. He performed as a soloist with many orchestras and organizations, introducing Widor's Chorale et Variations and Ravel's Introduction et Allegro, as well as Debussy's Danses Sacree et Profane. He co-founded the International Composers Guild with Edgard Varèse in 1921, which was an important new music organization, that presented major European composers, such as Maurice Ravel, in concert, and premiered works such as Stravinsky's Les Noces. He formed the National Harp Association and led its national conferences, which featured performances by a mass ensemble of harpists. He published journals on the harp and art, beginning with Eolus, and later, Eolian Review. They featured articles by well-known people in the arts and illustrations by well-known artists such as Witold Gordon, who designed the Salzedo Model harp for Lyon & Healy to manufacture, based on ideas by Salzedo. He developed a new approach to playing the harp, based in part on his experience as a pianist, created new tone colors that he named and developed graphic notations for, as published in his Modern Study of the Harp, and the Method for the Harp by Lucile Lawrence, both of which were published by G. Schirmer.
- Birthplace: Arcachon, France
- André Charles Prosper Messager (French: [mɛsaʒe]; 30 December 1853 – 24 February 1929) was a French composer, organist, pianist and conductor. His compositions include eight ballets and thirty opéras comiques, opérettes and other stage works, among which his ballet Les Deux Pigeons (1886) and opéra comique Véronique (1898) have had lasting success; Les P'tites Michu (1897) and Monsieur Beaucaire (1919) were also popular internationally. Messager took up the piano as a small child and later studied composition with, among others, Camille Saint-Saëns and Gabriel Fauré. He became a major figure in the musical life of Paris and later London, both as a conductor and a composer. Many of his Parisian works were also produced in the West End and some on Broadway; the most successful had long runs and numerous international revivals. He wrote two operatic works in English, and his later output included musical comedies for Sacha Guitry and Yvonne Printemps. As a conductor, Messager held prominent positions in Paris and London, at the head of the Opéra-Comique, the Paris Opéra, the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Although as a composer he is known chiefly for his light works, as a conductor he presented a wide range of operas, from Mozart to Richard Strauss, and he acquired a reputation as a conductor of Wagner. In Paris he conducted the world premieres of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, Massenet's Grisélidis and Charpentier's Louise. At Covent Garden, he gave the British premieres of operas by Saint-Saëns and Massenet. Messager's music became known for its melodic and orchestral invention, musical craftsmanship, and characteristically French elegance and grace. Although most of his works have been infrequently revived, historians of music consider him the last major figure in French opéra comique and opérette.
- Birthplace: Montluçon, France
- Lucien Louis Capet (8 January 1873 – 18 December 1928) was a French violinist, pedagogue and composer.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Francis Rimbert (born 3 October 1952 in Val d'Oise, France) is a French musician and composer.
- Birthplace: Val-d'Oise, France
- Philippe de Vitry (31 October 1291 – 9 June 1361) was a French composer, music theorist and poet. He was an accomplished, innovative, and influential composer, and may also have been the author of the Ars Nova treatise. He was widely acknowledged as the greatest musician of his day, with Petrarch writing a glowing tribute, calling him: "... the keenest and most ardent seeker of truth, so great a philosopher of our age."
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Stéphane Berla is a film director, screenwriter, composer and producer.
- Birthplace: Lyon, France
- Pascal Kleiman (born 19 April 1968) is a French DJ based in Valencia, Spain, who also produces music as 'DJ RamBam'.
- Birthplace: Toulouse, France
- Qigang Chen (Chinese: 陈其钢; pinyin: Chén Qígāng, pronounced [tʂʰə̌n t͡ɕǐkɑ́ŋ]) is a composer of Chinese origin born in 1951 in Shanghai. He has lived in France since 1984, and obtained French citizenship in 1992.
- Birthplace: Shanghai, China
- One of France's biggest pop music stars for over four decades, Patrick Bruel earned multiple No. 1 albums in a variety of genres, from teen-oriented pop to traditional chansons, while also enjoying a busy second career as an actor in French dramas and action films. Born Patrick Maurice Benguigui on May 14, 1959 in Tiemcen, a small town in Algeria, he was brought to France in 1962 by his mother and raised in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil. Though football was his first true passion, he developed an interest in singing through his mother's record collection, where he discovered French pop stars like Jacques Brel and Michel Sardou, as well as English-language rock performers like Eric Clapton. He began his professional music career as an entertainer at French clubs, but got his first taste of stardom as an actor, playing a young French-Algerian in the film "Le Coup de Sirocco" (1978). The following year, Bruel traveled to New York City, where he met Gérard Presgurvic. The pair would soon form a creative partnership, with Presgurvic serving as Bruel's chief songwriter. Upon his return to Paris, Bruel issued his first single, "Vide" ("Empty," 1982), but its follow-up "Marre de cette nana-là" ("Enough of That Chick," 1983) became his first substantial hit. A second hit, "Comment Ça Va Pour Vous" ("How's It Going For You"), followed in 1985, as well as appearances in a string of features, including "Le Batard" (1982) and "Le Grand Carnaval" (1983). However, Bruel's first LP, De Face (1986), was only a modest success, and it would be three years before he would issue another studio album. His sophomore effort, Alors Regarde (1989), was a major success, buoyed by the hit single "Casser la Voix" ("To Break the Voice"), and a subsequent tour through France and abroad in 1990 established Bruel as a bona fide pop sensation, with the media dubbing the hysterical reaction of teenaged female fans "Bruelmania." A third studio album, simply titled Bruel (1994), was a marked departure from its predecessors, hewing closer to a guitar-driven rock sound than his earlier pop ballads. The results were received with less enthusiasm, though Bruel remained a popular concert and moviehouse draw. He devoted more of his energy to his acting career, which encompassed hits like Francis Veber's "Jaguar" (1995) and Sydney Pollack's "Sabrina" (1996). He also displayed a talent for competitive poker, winning the Limit Hold 'Em championship in the 1998 World Series of Poker. When Bruel finally returned to the studio in 1999 to complete Juste Avant, he was dabbling with South American and African influences; the result was another hit album, reaching over a million copies in sales. In 2002, he tackled the venerable chanson style of French pop, recording duets with such established statesmen of the genre as Johnny Hallyday and Charles Aznavour for the double-LP Entre Deux ("Between Two"). It too proved popular, selling over two million copies and establishing Bruel as the highest paid singer of the year. In 2005, he recorded a charity single, "Et puis la terre," which benefitted Red Cross recovery efforts in the wake of the South Asian tsunami of 2004. By the late 2000s, Bruel was firmly established as one of France's most popular performers, scoring another chart-topping album with Des souvenirs devant (2006) and enjoying roles in high-profile film projects like Claude Chabrol's "L'ivresse du pouvior" (2007) and Claude Miller's "Un Secret" (2007). After focusing on his acting career for the next five years, Bruel published his autobiography before releasing a new album, Lequel de nous (2012), which became his fifth No. 1 album.
- Birthplace: Tlemcen, French Algeria
- Henri Tomasi (17 August 1901 – 13 January 1971) was a French classical composer and conductor. He was noted for his compositions that feature a stylistic renewal such as In Praise of Folly, Nuclear Era and the Silence of the Sea.
- Birthplace: Marseille, France
- Lucien Cailliet (May 22, 1891 – January 3, 1985) was a French-American composer, conductor, arranger and clarinetist.
- Birthplace: Dijon, France
- François Couperin (French: [fʁɑ̃swa kupʁɛ̃]; 10 November 1668 – 11 September 1733) was a French Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist. He was known as Couperin le Grand ("Couperin the Great") to distinguish him from other members of the musically talented Couperin family.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Benjamin Louis Paul Godard (18 August 1849 – 10 January 1895) was a French violinist and Romantic-era composer of Jewish extraction, best known for his opera Jocelyn. Godard composed eight operas, five symphonies, two piano and two violin concertos, string quartets, sonatas for violin and piano, piano pieces and etudes, and more than a hundred songs. He died at the age of 45 in Cannes (Alpes-Maritimes) of tuberculosis and was buried in the family tomb in Taverny in the French department of Val-d'Oise.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Bertrand Belin is a musician, writer, songwriter, guitarist, arranger and composer.
- André Edouard Antoine Marie Fleury (25 July 1903 – 6 August 1995) was a French composer, pianist, organist, and pedagogue.
- Birthplace: Neuilly-sur-Seine, Paris, France
- Francis Casadesus is a film score composer, a composer and a conductor.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Charles Koechlin, baptized Charles-Louis-Eugène Koechlin (French: [ʃaʁl lwi øʒɛn keklɛ̃]; 27 November 1867 – 31 December 1950), was a French composer, teacher and writer on music. He was a political radical all his life and a passionate enthusiast for such diverse things as medieval music, The Jungle Book of Rudyard Kipling, Johann Sebastian Bach, film stars (especially Lilian Harvey and Ginger Rogers), traveling, stereoscopic photography and socialism. He once said: "The artist needs an ivory tower, not as an escape from the world, but as a place where he can view the world and be himself. This tower is for the artist like a lighthouse shining out across the world."
- Birthplace: Paris, France
François Benoist
Dec. at 83 (1794-1878)François Benoist (10 September 1794 – 6 May 1878) was a French organist, composer, and pedagogue. Benoist was born in Nantes. He studied music at the Conservatoire de Paris and won the Prix de Rome in 1815 for his cantata Œnone. In 1819, he became organist (organiste du roi) and professor of organ at the Conservatoire; he held the latter post for half a century. His students included César Franck, Camille Saint-Saëns, Charles Lecocq, Georges Bizet, Louis Lefébure-Wely, Léo Delibes, and Adolphe Adam. As composer, he was comparatively unimportant, but he wrote two operas, four ballets, one Requiem Mass, and numerous works for organ. He died in Paris.- Birthplace: Nantes, France
- Henri Rabaud (10 November 1873 – 11 September 1949) was a French conductor and composer, who held important posts in the French musical establishment and upheld mainly conservative trends in French music in the first half of the twentieth century.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Dominique Probst (born 1954) is a French composer.The son of a noted playwright, Gisèle Casadesus, and an actor and director with the Comédie-Française, Lucien Probst, Dominique Probst won the First Prize for Percussion with the National Music Conservatory, Paris, in 1978. He has also been the timpanist of the Colonne Orchestra since 1973.In addition to performing as an instrumentalist and being a composer Probst gives instruction in percussion, chamber music, and musical education in various Parisian conservatories. Foremost among his compositions is his opera Maximilian Kolbe, to a libretto by Eugène Ionesco, about the Polish priest who gave his life to save a fellow inmate in Auschwitz. The opera was first performed in Rimini, Italy in 1988.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- André Campra (French: [kɑ̃pʁa]; baptized 4 December 1660 – 29 June 1744) was a French composer and conductor. Campra was one of the leading French opera composers in the period between Jean-Baptiste Lully and Jean-Philippe Rameau. He wrote several tragédies en musique and opéra-ballets that were extremely well received. He also wrote three books of cantatas as well as religious music, including a requiem.
- Birthplace: Aix-en-Provence, France
- Jean Wiener (or Wiéner) (19 March 1896, 14th arrondissement of Paris – 8 June 1982, Paris) was a French pianist and composer.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Adam de la Halle, also known as Adam le Bossu (Adam the Hunchback) (1240–1287) was a French-born trouvère, poet and musician. Adam's literary and musical works include chansons and jeux-partis (poetic debates) in the style of the trouvères; polyphonic rondel and motets in the style of early liturgical polyphony; and a musical play, "Jeu de Robin et Marion" (c. 1282–83), which is considered the earliest surviving secular French play with music. He was a member of the Confrérie des jongleurs et bourgeois d'Arras.
- Birthplace: Arras, France
- Jean-Marie Leclair l'aîné, also known as Jean-Marie Leclair the Elder (10 May 1697 – 22 October 1764), was a Baroque violinist and composer. He is considered to have founded the French violin school. His brothers Jean-Marie Leclair the younger (1703–77), Pierre Leclair (1709–84) and Jean-Benoît Leclair (1714–after 1759) were also musicians.
- Birthplace: Lyon, France
- Catherine Lara (born Catherine Bodet; 29 May 1945) is a French violinist, composer, and singer.
- Birthplace: Poissy, France
- Jacques-Martin Hotteterre (29 September 1674 – 16 July 1763), also known as Jacques Martin or Jacques Hotteterre, was a French composer and flautist who was the most celebrated of a family of wind instrument makers and wind performers.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Sébastien Tellier (French: [tɛlje]; born 22 February 1975) is a French Musician, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He is currently signed to Record Makers, a French independent record label. He sings in English, French and Italian.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Jean-Michel Soupraya (born April 25, 1973), is a French record producer, music conductor, musical arranger, film composer, artist development expert. and musician. Often referred to as The Next Quincy Jones, Soupraya is noted for his talent at piano and keyboard and unique eclectic musical abilities. He has been heavily influenced by his time spent in the West Indies where he was surrounded by percussion, marimbas, singers, dancers and carnivals. He was a keyboardist for Zionbar, an international reggae band Polygram and Universal; and collaborated with Guy Nsangue, Abraham Laboriel, Paul Jackson Jr., John JR Robinson, Luis Conte, Franck Gelibert, Lenny Waronker, Phil Tan, Mick Guzauski of Barking Doctor Recording, Henri Gravier, Luck Mervil, Malcolm Pollack, Dave Aron, Curtis King, popular French rappers Tonton David and MC Solaar. In 2014, he created the TV show "The Producer Show".
Philippe Rombi
Age: 56Philippe Rombi (born 3 April 1968) is a French film score composer. His score for Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis was nominated for best original score for a comedy film at the fifth International Film Music Critics Association (IFCMA) Awards for Excellence in 2008.- Birthplace: Pau, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France
- Luc Ferrari (February 5, 1929 – August 22, 2005) was a French composer of Italian heritage and pioneer in musique concrète and electroacoustic music.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Charles-Simon Catel (10 July 1773 – 29 November 1830) was a French composer and educator born at L'Aigle, Orne.
- Birthplace: L'Aigle, France
- Paul Tortelier (21 March 1914 – 18 December 1990) was a French cellist and composer.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Didier «Ecama» Marouani (born 14 July 1953, in Monaco) is a French composer and musician.
- Birthplace: Monaco
- Joseph Guy Marie Ropartz (French: [ʁɔpaʁts]; 15 June 1864 – 22 November 1955) was a French composer and conductor. His compositions included five symphonies, three violin sonatas, cello sonatas, six string quartets, a piano trio and string trio (both in A minor), stage works, a number of choral works and other music, often alluding to his Breton heritage. Ropartz also published poetry.
- Birthplace: Guingamp, France
Fromental Halévy
Dec. at 62 (1799-1862)Jacques-François-Fromental-Élie Halévy, usually known as Fromental Halévy (French: [fʁɔmɑ̃tal alevi]; 27 May 1799 – 17 March 1862), was a French composer. He is known today largely for his opera La Juive.- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Jacques Dutronc was a musician of substantial repute and critical acclaim before he entered the acting profession. He was a member of the rock group El Toro et les Cyclones and wrote songs for his wife, Françoise Hardy, a famous French singer. He pursued a successful solo career as a singer, songwriter, and guitarist, and then dove into film, eventually garnering a César for his riveting portrayal of artist Vincent Van Gogh in the 1991 film "Van Gogh." Dutronc has been nominated for several other performances, including his role as Battistelli in "Place Vendôme," a diamond smuggling thriller starring French star Catherine Deneuve. Dutronc's varied career has brought him into collaboration with many other icons of French cinema, including French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard in the film "Every Man for Himself." Here Dutronc played a brooding, depressed filmmaker named Godard, in an obvious nod to the real-life director's own obsessive introspection. Dutronc also contributed as a composer to many of the films he starred in, and his songs have appeared on numerous other film sound tracks.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Bernard Parmegiani (27 October 1927 − 21 November 2013) was a French composer best known for his electronic or acousmatic music.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Benjamin Biolay was an actor who had a successful Hollywood career. Biolay's career beginnings included film roles in "Stella" (2008) and "La meute" (2010). Biolay began to focus on film after appearing in "Bachelor Days are Over" (2011), "Qui a envie d'être aimé ?" (2011) and the comedy "Au bout du conte" (2013) with Jean-Pierre Bacri. He also appeared in "Gaby Baby Doll" (2014) and "L' art de la fugue" (2015) with Laurent Lafitte. More recently, Biolay acted in "The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun" (2015). Biolay was married to Chiara Mastroianni.
- Birthplace: Villefranche-sur-Saône, Rhône, France
- Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy (French: [vɛ̃sɑ̃ dɛ̃di]; 27 March 1851 – 2 December 1931) was a French composer and teacher.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
Maurice Le Roux
Dec. at 69 (1923-1992)Maurice Le Roux or Leroux (6 February 1923, Paris, France – 19 October 1992 in Avignon, France) was a French composer and conductor. He studied composition at the Paris Conservatory and was a student of Olivier Messiaen. His work includes 19 original film scores and a number of television scores and orchestrations.1- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Georges Moustaki (born Giuseppe Mustacchi; 3 May 1934 – 23 May 2013) was an Egyptian-French singer-songwriter of Jewish Italo-Greek origin, best known for the poetic rhythm and simplicity of the romantic songs he composed and often sang. Moustaki gave France some of its best-loved music by writing about 300 songs for some of the most popular singers in that country, such as Édith Piaf, Dalida, Françoise Hardy, Yves Montand, Barbara, Brigitte Fontaine, Herbert Pagani, France Gall, Cindy Daniel, Juliette Greco, Pia Colombo, and Tino Rossi, as well as for himself.
- Birthplace: Alexandria, Egypt
- Alexis Roland-Manuel (22 March 1891 – 1 November 1966) was a French composer and critic, remembered mainly for his criticism.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Michel Portal (born 27 November 1935) is a French composer, saxophonist, and clarinetist. He plays both jazz and classical music and is considered to be "one of the architects of modern European jazz".
- Birthplace: Bayonne, France
- François Couturier is a film score composer and pianist.
- Birthplace: Fleury-les-Aubrais, France
Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer
Dec. at 50 (1705-1755)Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer (ca. 1705 – 11 January 1755) was a French composer and harpsichordist. Born in Turin, Royer went to Paris in 1725, and in 1734 became maître de musique des enfants de France, responsible for the musical education of the children of the king, Louis XV. Together with the violinist Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville, Royer directed the Concert Spirituel, starting in 1748. Royer was at the Paris Opéra during the 1730s and the 1750s, writing six operas himself, of which the best known is the ballet-héroïque Zaïde, reine de Grenade. In 1753 he acquired the prestigious position of music director of the chambre du roi (the king's chamber), and in the same year was named director of the Royal Opera orchestra. He died in Paris.- Birthplace: Turin, Italy
Pierre Cochereau
Dec. at 59 (1924-1984)Pierre Eugène Charles Cochereau (July 9, 1924 – March 6, 1984), was a French organist, improviser, composer, and pedagogue.- Birthplace: Saint-Mandé, France
Bernard Blancan
Age: 66Bernard Blancan (born 9 September 1958) is a French actor. He has appeared in more than 85 films and television shows since 1989. He shared the award for Best Actor for his role in Days of Glory at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.- Birthplace: France, Bayonne
- Jacques Duphly (also Dufly, Du Phly; January 12, 1715 – July 15, 1789) was a French harpsichordist and composer.
- Birthplace: Rouen, France
Maurice Fleuret
Dec. at 57 (1932-1990)Maurice Fleuret was a French composer, music journalist, radio producer, arts administrator, and festival organizer.- Birthplace: La Talaudière, France
- Marie-Juliette Olga "Lili" Boulanger (French: [bu.lɑ̃.ʒe]; 21 August 1893 – 15 March 1918) was a French composer, and the first female winner of the Prix de Rome composition prize. Her older sister was the noted composer and composition teacher Nadia Boulanger.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
