Music of Georges Auric: A Documented Catalogue in Four Volumes

This serves as the first comprehensive catalogue of the orchestral, vocal, and chamber music composed by Georges Auric, one of France’s most important twentieth-century musicians. Approximately three hundred-fifty compositions are considered here with full descriptions of all known printed and manuscript sources; locations of literary works on which some are based; selections of important reviews; discographies and lists of videos; and relevant performance data including first performances or showings.

Auric was an influential figure in French art and culture and was widely known to the entire French artistic establishment. His compositional abilities were extremely facile and he could write a significant film score in the short time of a few weeks. On more than one occasion he scored four or more films in the same year in addition to a myriad of other duties.

He was a child prodigy who studied at the Paris Conservatory and the Schola Cantorum while still a teenager. Later in life he was a major member of the so called Les Six (Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, and Germaine Tailleferre), which was a major force in twentieth century music. With the recent interest in Auric’s contribution to films, it provides rich detail culled from libraries and private archives around the world, numerous newspapers and journals, unpublished letters by Auric, and the secondary literature. With the publication of this catalogue all the members of Les Six are now represented.