Alain Bernaud

Alain Henri Bernaud (8 March 1932 – 4 December 2020) was a French composer.

Bernaud was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine of a polytechnician father, a good violinist and violist and a mother playing the piano, daughter of Marcel Chadeigne who was, before and after the First World War, choir conductor at the Paris Opera and pianist - accompanist - decipherer - reducer of orchestral scores.

He had formed with Maurice Ravel, Maurice Delage, Déodat de Séverac, Florent Schmitt, Paul Ladmirault, Émile Vuillermoz, Désiré Inghelbrecht, Ricardo Viñes and Tristan Klingsor, a group they had named Les Apaches, and whose rallying call was whistling the first theme of Borodin's Second Symphony.

Arriving in Paris in 1938, he began studying piano and music theory with Marie-Louise Gigout-Boëllmann, wrote his Opus 1, a string quartet (for the family!) and then returned to the Conservatoire de Paris (direction of Claude Delvincourt) in specialized solfege class, at Lucette Descaves, where he met Michel Legrand, Roger Boutry, Jean-Michel Defaye and Alain Weber.

He then followed Jules Gentil's piano class (1st medal) - studied harmony with Jacques de La Presle (1st prize) - counterpoint and fugue with Noël Gallon (1st medal and 1st prize) - finally musical composition with Tony Aubin (1st Prix de Rome in 1953 with Ouverture à la française for 2 pianos).

He won the 2nd Prix de Rome in 1955 with the cantata Le Rire de Gargantua then 1st Grand Prix de Rome in 1957 with the cantata La fée Urgèle.

Bernaud stayed 40 months at the Villa Médicis, a stay during which he wrote a quartet for saxophones, Les chants de la jungle - six melodies for baritone and string orchestra on poems from Rudyard Kipling, a Symphony, an Ouverture pour orchestre de chambre (1960), a Messe brève for mixed choir and organ (1958), a Nocturne pour orchestre à cordes, Sept mélodies pour flûte et mezzo soprano on poems by Omar Khayyam.

Back in France, he wrote scores for television shows Présence du passé, for short films and also feature films and was appointed, in 1963, professor of solfege for instrumentalists at the Conservatoire de Paris, and a little later, in 1971, harmony teacher in the same establishment.

He provided this teaching there until the end of 1999.

He is currently retired in northern Brittany and continues to compose and put in order his existing production.