Maurice Jaubert

Maurice Jaubert (3 January 1900 – 19 June 1940) was a prolific French composer who scored some of the most important films of the early sound era in France, including Jean Vigo’s Zero for Conduct and L'Atalante, and René Clair’s Quatorze Juillet and Le Dernier Milliardaire.

Serving in both world wars, he died in action during World War II at the age of 40.

Born in Nice on 3 January 1900, he was the second son of François Jaubert, a lawyer who would become the president of the Nice bar.

Jaubert grew up in a musical household, and began playing the piano aged five.

After gaining his baccalaureat from the Lycée Masséna in Nice in 1916, he enrolled at the Nice Conservatory of Music, where he studied harmony, counterpoint and piano.

He was awarded the first piano prize in 1916.

Jaubert left for Paris and studied law and literature at the Sorbonne.

When he returned to his native town in 1919, he was the youngest lawyer in France.

His first compositions date from this period but soon after he undertook his military service and became an officer in engineering.

Jaubert's compositions in the early 1920s include songs, piano pieces, chamber music, and divertissements.

Demobilized in 1922, Jaubert decided to give up law practice and devote all his time to music.

The next year, he completed his musical education in Paris with Albert Groz, while undertaking a variety of music related jobs such as proof correction and checking Pleyela rolls.

He wrote his first stage music in 1925 for a play by Calderón, Le Magicien prodigieux, using the Pleyela, a revolutionary player piano at the time.

He was then hired by Pleyel to record rolls on the Pleyela.

Indeed, Jaubert was always attracted by technical innovations that could serve his artistic aspirations.

While working on this play, he met a young soprano, Marthe Bréga, who would sing most of his vocal compositions.

They married in 1926, with Maurice Ravel as Jaubert's best man.

They had a daughter, Françoise, in 1927.

In 1929, while pursuing his work for the concert hall and the stage, Maurice Jaubert began writing and conducting for cinema.

He collaborated with prominent directors such as Alberto Cavalcanti (Le Petit Chaperon Rouge), Jean Vigo (Zero for Conduct and L'Atalante), René Clair Quatorze Juillet and Le Dernier Milliardaire, Julien Duvivier (Carnet de bal and La Fin du Jour, Marcel Carné’s Drôle de drame, Hôtel du Nord, Quai des brumes (Port of Shadows), and Le Jour se lève (Daybreak) and Henri Storck’s Belgian documentaries.

He also worked briefly in the UK, scoring We Live in Two Worlds directed by Cavalcanti and produced by John Grierson.

In the 1930s he gained a reputation as a conductor in France and abroad, most notably for the final season of Marguerite Bériza's opera company and the season of opéras-bouffes for the 1937 exposition (where he also led the premiere of his Jeanne d’Arc, Op. 61, a 'Symphonie concertante pour soprano et orchestre').

His 'poème chorégraphique' Le Jour was premiered by the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris under Pierre Monteux in 1931, while a Suite française was premiered by Vladimir Golschmann in St Louis the following year.

His music was written in a style of clarity, frankness and freedom, in which he did not seek novelty for the sake of it and in which his spontaneity is not weighed down by pedantic formulas.

His writings comprise articles and lectures, as well as a large number of letters that capture his political opinions.

how he viewed his times, and his musical tastes (for example, he was a strong supporter of Kurt Weill when that composer was widely misunderstood).

At the Comédie des Champs-Élysées, in 1937 he conducted the premiere of Philippine, an opérette, by Marcel Delannoy with libretto by Henri Lyon and Jean Limozin.

The 'complainte de l'homme serpente' "Ah! Elle était de type femme" was recorded on Columbia by Hugues Cuénod with an orchestra conducted by Jaubert in November 1937.

War, however, disrupted Jaubert's artistic path.

Mobilized in September 1939, he joined an engineering company he would command as a reserve captain.

His letters to his wife reflect a spirit of sacrifice tinged with deep humanism.

Jaubert did not live to hear his last two compositions, written at his base camp.

Maurice Jaubert played a small role as an orchestra conductor in La Nuit de décembre by Kurt Bernhardt, produced in 1939.

Except for soundtracks on films, this mainly consists of posthumously recorded music.

He was fatally wounded after having successfully blown up a bridge; he died a few hours later at the Baccarat Hospital on 19 June 1940.

In his films L'Histoire d'Adèle H. (1975), L'Homme qui aimait les femmes (1977) and La Chambre verte (1978), François Truffaut uses music by Jaubert.

Although Maurice Jaubert understood and appreciated film, composing and scoring them was but one of his creative activities.

As music director of Pathé-Nathan studio, he conducted the film scores of several other composers, including Arthur Honegger and Darius Milhaud.