Georges Auric - Violin Sonata (audio + sheet music)

More than the other members of the group of French composers known as Les Six, Georges Auric made his mark as a composer of incidental and dramatic music. His early encounter with ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev resulted in commissions for a number of dance scores. Among them were the slightly acerbic, mock-Romantic confections Les Fâcheux (1924) and Les Matelots (1925). The bulk of his ballet work, for Diaghilev and others, was produced between 1924 and 1934, and then between 1949 and 1952. Auric was also an early specialist in music for movies, a pursuit that occupied him primarily between his two ballet phases. His first film score was for Jean Cocteau’s notorious 1930 Surrealist opus Le Sang d’un poète, and his score for the 1932 film A nous la liberté also gained currency as a symphonic suite. Film fanciers will have certainly encountered Auric’s scores for the 1949-1950 Cocteau creations Les parents terribles and Orphée. And his Moulin Rouge, music for the popular 1952 film about Toulouse-Lautrec, eve