Joseph Kosma – Autumn Leaves
As recorded by Bill Evans (sheet music)
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Joseph Kosma
Joseph Kosma was born in Budapest 22 October 1905. He began studying music at the age of eleven and soon wrote a short opera The Christmas Trenches revealing his gifts.
After his classical studies, with the advice of the main composer Leo Weiner and teacher, He entered the Academy of Music in Budapest, he will leave with a degree in conducting ; assistant conductor at the opera, he participated in Bartók’s miraculous mandarin rehearsals.
In 1928, as a scholarship holder, he moved to Berlin, where he met Lilly Call, a famous concert pianist; she became his wife. Will be your best counselor and musical knowledge. She participates in the theater of Bertolt Brecht and Weigel Helena; Brechtian songs will be the mold of the songs from her they come. He became a friend of the composer Hanns Eisler.
In March 1933, against the rise of Nazism, Kosma and his wife took refuge in France, tough years, where the meeting of the poet and screenwriter Jacques Prévert and the filmmaker Jean Renoir, will be the teginning of his salvation: The Music of the Great Illusion and The human beast, his first songs.
The war and the exodus forced him to join the Maritime Alps, where he stayed for almost 5 years. He wrote, as candidates, film music, notably Les visiteurs du soir et Les enfants duparadis. He also composes works of pure music, like the Sonata, whose 1940 written by his wife Lilly and created by him, and a piano concerto, which became the concertante Fantaisie.
Returning to Paris in October 1944, this is the beginning of a very active composing period: songs (Autumn leaves…), ballets (The appointment, The horseman), music scene, cantatas (The bridges of Paris), operas (The weavers), symphonic (Concertino for clarinet and orchestra), chamber music (Sonatina for violin and piano, Duo for double bass and piano), and film music (The doors at night, The Chouans, Part of the campaign , The Little Soldier, House of Seven Sins, Juliette and the Key to Dreams).
Joseph Kosma died on August 7, 1969, in Guyon la Roche, France.
Most of his work is published by Editions Enoch in Paris.