Vangelis La Petite Fille de la mer Piano solo sheet music, Noten, partitura, partition, spartiti

Best Sheet Music download from our Library.

Who was VANGELIS?

Biography

• Birthdate March 29, 1943
• place of birth Βόλος, Magnisia, Thessaly, Greece
• Deceased May 17, 2022 (79 years old)

Evangelos Odysseys Papathanassiou, better known as Vangelis (born March 29, 1943 – died May 17, 2022) was a famous Greek electronic music keyboardist and composer.

Among his best-known works are the soundtracks for the films Chariots of Fire (winner of the Oscar for best soundtrack in 1981), Blade Runner (1982), and 1492: The Conquest of Paradise (1992).

Please, subscribe to our Library.

If you are already a subscriber, please, check our NEW SCORES’ page every month for new sheet music. THANK YOU!

Their music is characterized by the use of synthesizers and occasionally acoustic instruments to create surround sound atmospheres, in a generally grand and solemn tone. It is not easy to frame his music within a specific genre, although it is common for him to be included among the ranks of the so-called New Music, or more broadly as a contemporary classical musician. In any case, the diversity and complexity of the work contained in his discography makes it difficult to classify him as a purely New Age artist, since he is even considered one of the pioneers of the avant-garde of electronic music that occurred in the mid-1970s.

Although some of his best-known works belong to the world of film and television music, Vangelis has achieved recognition for both his soundtracks and his studio albums. Among his works are also several creations for plays: Elektra (1983), Medea (1992), Las troyanas (2001), The Tempest (2002). He has also composed for ballet: RB Sque (1983), Frankenstein: Modern Prometheus (1985), The Beauty and the Beast (1986).

He develops a parallel career as a painter, having held several international exhibitions. His contribution to various projects of cultural interest have established him as a personality with considerable media weight, especially in Greece.

In his honor, the International Astronomical Union gave his name to an asteroid: (6354) Vangelis.

Vangelis, the pioneer

The wealthy position of the Papathanassiou family meant that Vangelis, who was already performing small concerts with his own compositions at the age of six, was one of the first owners of a synthesizer in Greece. He made his debut on the record market as keyboardist for the group The Forminx, one of the many youth bands that formed in the mid-sixties to follow in the musical and aesthetic footsteps of The Beatles. In 1967, Vangelis had the opportunity to make the soundtrack for 5000 Psemmata, a Greek comedy film.

Later, Vangelis joined the progressive rock band Aphrodite’s Child along with Demis Roussos (the artist’s cousin) and Lucas Sideras. The trio achieved notable successes – especially in Europe – with songs such as Spring Summer Winter and Fall, Rain and Tears and Let Me Love, Let Me Live. Aphrodite’s Child released three studio albums, the most notable being 666 (The Apocalypse of John, 13/18), a conceptual double vinyl about the Apocalypse of San Juan that, on the one hand, earned them critical recognition as rock pioneers. symphonic, and on the other, censorship in some countries due to the supposed satanic and/or obscene messages that said work would contain.

In one of the songs, actress Irene Papas repeatedly shouts an ambiguous phrase in a mixture of hallucinogenic and orgasmic ecstasy, and the second vinyl concludes with the phrase “do it”, which was suppressed in the United States. 666 is considered one of the most influential albums of its time and a milestone in conceptual music, praised, among others, by the painter Salvador Dalí. The experimental direction imposed on this last album by Vangelis, the backbone of Aphrodite’s Child, results in the group’s separation. From this moment on, the keyboardist will begin a pilgrimage through the main European cultural capitals that will lead him to record several albums in cities such as Paris or London, eventually building his own recording studio in the second, which he baptizes Nemo.

It is at this time that Vangelis released several singles under a pseudonym, perhaps testing the public’s reaction to the sound he could adopt for his solo career, or perhaps using these forays as a way to give outlet to little-known facets of his creativity in regarding the breadth of genres, without compromising their image before their followers.

1970 – 1980

Before the band Aphrodite’s Child dissolved, Vangelis had already released his first solo album titled Sex Power, the soundtrack to the film of the same title, directed by Henry Chapier, for whom he would also compose the music for Amore. This first work is followed by two albums corresponding to improvisation sessions, which—although they are interesting pieces—are published without the permission of the artist, who claims not to consider them representative of his style.

Hypothesis, the first of them, is an electroacoustic jazz experiment, and The Dragon, the second, is a progressive rock piece with a greater degree of intentionality. In the album Earth, again a progressive piece, Vangelis proposes a fusion of rock music with Mediterranean folklore, a path that he would not take in his following creations.

During the mid-70s, Vangelis was especially busy composing several soundtracks for independent films (the Mexican ¿Don’t you hear the dogs barking?, renamed Ignacio, or Crime and Passion), as well as some relatively little-known works, especially Fais Que Ton Rêve Sois Plus Long Que La Nuit, a symphonic poem in two movements about the May 1968 riots in Paris. At this time, his music for the documentary series L’Apocalypse Des Animaux stands out, a work that is part of a long list of collaborations with the filmmaker Frederic Rossif (George Mathieu ou la Fureur d’Etre, Pasteur le Siecle and De Nuremberg a Nuremberg, among others). ), which is his first chart-topping success as a solo artist.

Between 1975 and 1980, Vangelis strengthened his particular sound through a series of albums that, in many cases, emerged as a logical evolution of one another. Heaven and Hell (1975) is a concept album with multiple choral pieces assembled in two long suites, offering a sound close to classical music on the first side of the vinyl, which concludes with the vocal song So Long Ago, So Clear , and more experimental compositions in the second; Albedo 0.39 (1976) constitutes one of the best-known works of so-called cosmic music, flowing between passages of progressive rock and electronic avant-garde movements, and with a more spontaneous and minimalist sound than that of Heaven and Hell. Not in vain, Vangelis will often be linked to the world of science fiction, not only for this kind of “space” sound that he develops in some albums, but also for his participation in Blade Runner, in the Cosmos series and in a NASA project. The author of 2001, Arthur C. Clarke, also thanks him for his inspiration for the novel 2010: Odyssey Two.

Other albums such as Beaubourg (1978) belong to the same period, hermetic, enveloping and extremely provocative in its apparent absence of melodies or rhythmic schemes; the commercial Spiral (1977), which contains the classic To the Unknown Man along with other electronic pieces widely covered since then, such as Dervish D; China and Opera Sauvage (1979), both with an abundance of short and melodic songs, easily accessible to the general public without giving up the search for artistic depth. From both albums, the songs Himalaya and Rêve stand out, among others. At that time, Peter Weir’s film The Year of Living Dangerously adopted the theme L’Enfant, from Opera Sauvage, as its main theme.

In 1980, the album See You Later was released, a risky reflection on the conventionalism of everyday life in today’s society, approached at times with satirical gestures. This album contains one of the Greek’s emblematic pieces, Memories of Green, which will appear again in the film Blade Runner as an integral part of its musical setting. The album, however, had been conceived in 1975, even before Heaven and Hell was published.

The expansion and acceptance of Vangelis’ music on a commercial and critical level receives a great boost thanks to the inclusion of several songs from his albums from the seventies (Heaven and Hell, Ignacio…) in the successful television series Cosmos: A personal journey , a documentary about the Universe and the origin of life on Earth created by Carl Sagan, which has been broadcast repeatedly internationally.

1980 – 1990

The eighties began successfully for Vangelis, winning the Hollywood Academy statuette with his soundtrack for Chariots of Fire, beating, among others, John Williams and his score for Raiders of the Lost Ark. The content of the album in question, as will happen with the rest of his future works for the cinema, does not have a strict relationship with the pieces used in the film, but rather these are reedited and rearranged to create a musical work that functions as studio album, for independent listening.

What’s more, one often has the feeling while watching the film Chariots of Fire, directed by Hugh Hudson, that the album’s themes are indeed present in it, although partially reinterpreted. Greek themes also appear in the film, such as Hymne, composed for the seminal Opera Sauvage. In any case, it should be clarified that in the other films scored by Vangelis there is no doubt that the themes used in the montage correspond exactly to the album versions, regardless of whether there are unreleased themes or the order of the songs. pieces vary.

It is interesting to mention the method that the Greek uses to score films, since he usually limits himself to improvising on the keyboards while visualizing the provisional montages provided by the directors following a “direct creation” technique. Several filmmakers have commented on their amazement at Vangelis’s ability to create pieces on the fly that fit perfectly with their scenes.

From the moment of receiving the Oscar, and perhaps fearing the possibility of being pigeonholed as a film musician, Vangelis decided not to commercially publish all of his works for the seventh art, a decision that in fact has only been broken on a few occasions. Examples of his unreleased soundtracks include the scores for the films Missing by Costa Gavras and The Bounty by Roger Donaldson, all of which officially do not exist as albums. From Frederic Rossif’s documentary Sauvage et Beau, only the song of the same title remains, which would be included in the Portraits compilation.

His next work for the big screen will become one of his greatest achievements, a legendary soundtrack for a cult film, Blade Runner, by Ridley Scott, a recording that was only published in a revised edition in 1994, although the editions Pirates abounded at this time. Scott, in his role as director of television commercials, has already worked with Greek music, and although Jerry Goldsmith is hired to make up for the delay in sending the required recording to Vangelis, it is finally coupled to the montage of the movie before the official premiere.

It was precisely the pressure of the dates that prevented the musician from going to collect the Oscar for Chariots of Fire. The score of Blade Runner is characterized above all by amalgamating electronic and ethnic music with sounds of jazz and blues, managing to perfectly set the tribute to film noir from a dystopian approach that the film proposes. The song Memories of Green was later reused in another Scott film, Someone to Watch Over Me, although covered by another artist.

The rest of the eighties are marked by the alternation of very commercial works with more risky ones, in which Vangelis expanded his musical range, obtaining an irregular response from critics and the public. Examples of the first type are Antarctica, soundtrack for a successful Japanese film, and Direct, recorded for his new record company, and which presents a somewhat more aseptic and depersonalized sound, highlighting the songs Elsewhere, Ave, and Intergallactic Radio Station. The second type of albums corresponds to Soil Festivities, with an atmospheric and environmental character, and Invisible Connections, the first album published by the German classical music label Deutsche Grammophon by a composer from the pop sphere, and dominated by the atonal and indecipherable character of contemporary art music.

Halfway between both trends is Mask, ambitious in its sound and accessible, on the other hand, to the uninitiated public. This album would decisively influence some of his best-known recordings of the following decade, especially Mythodea.

From a recording point of view, the eighties conclude for Vangelis with the never-released score of Francesco, an Italian film about the life of Saint Francis of Assisi starring Mickey Rourke; and with the album The City, a work that explores the combination of urban environments with electronic minimalism. This album was recorded in Rome, and its character is witnessed by the piece Good to See You, in which the first 23 seconds only consist of city noises. The film director Roman Polanski and his partner, the actress Emmanuelle Seigner, participate with their voices in this work, with whom the Greek will next work on the film Bitter Moon, a soundtrack that would not officially see the light of day either. in album form.

1990 – 2000

In 1992, and after the lukewarm reception of The City (first work on the Warner label – East West), Vangelis obtained the necessary support to continue at the top during the new decade. He achieves this with the great success of his soundtrack for 1492: Conquest of Paradise (again with Ridley Scott). The central theme, Conquest of Paradise, is one of the musician’s best-known pieces, so much so that John Williams and Klaus Schulze have recorded their own versions of this choral hymn.

The celebrity of Conquest of Paradise quickly reached the world of advertising, as had happened countless times with Vangelis’s music, and this theme was adopted by the boxer Henry Maske for his own image campaigns.

The collaboration with Ridley Scott in these years did not end with the film about Columbus, but the British director subsequently released Blade Runner: the director’s cut, in which the elimination of Harrison Ford’s monologues gives greater notoriety to the soundtrack . The significance of this revival encouraged Vangelis to finally publish the album with its original music, taking advantage of the occasion to add some songs discarded in 1982, as well as totally new pieces that contain fragments of dialogue between the characters.

On the cover of Blade Runner it is not specified that it is the original music of the film, and this is an exercise in objectivity on the part of the Greek, since the album as a whole can be understood more as a conceptual work than as a band loud to use. Certainly, and although the classic themes of the film are scrupulously respected (they are not retouched or re-recorded), the cuts on the album are linked to each other, as was already customary in Vangelis’ works. From then on, and although Vangelis and Scott have not coincided again on the same project, the director has regularly relied on Hans Zimmer for his soundtracks, a musician who, considering his compositional style, could have Vangelis among his most important creative influences. .

The nineties meant for the artist a greater approach to the compositional schemes and the gravity of the classical tradition, without insisting as much on the creation of experimental music as he did in previous decades. The album Voices explores the different sonic possibilities of the human voice, from the pseudo-communist anthem Voices to a pop song with Paul Young.

The lyrics of the three songs sung were written by the vocalists themselves: Caroline Lavelle, Stina Nordenstam and the aforementioned Paul Young. Oceanic, on the other hand, is a concept album about the oceans, inspired by the swimming films of the 1950s. It is difficult to classify it as a risky work, although it is true that it achieved acceptable commercial and critical success among fans of the New Age music. His next album, based almost entirely on a limited edition of 3,000 copies for collectors that had been published in 1995, is El Greco, probably one of the most successful in his discography.

El Greco is a tribute to the genius of mannerism and the sober religious and palatial environments of his time, capturing the personal creative universe of the Cretan painter through ten movements. Movements III, V and VII, the relatively warmest on the album, do not correspond to the original score from ’95, but were added in 1998.

Coinciding with the publication of the Oceanic album, what was to become the musician’s official website, www.vangelisworld.com , appeared on the Internet, which however was never finished.

The new century

In 2001, NASA contacted Vangelis to commission him to compose a song that would serve as an anthem for the unmanned mission to Mars 2001: Mars Odyssey. The commission resulted in the album Mythodea, partly based on a previous work by the artist not officially published. Mythodea is presented live in Athens, and the event marks the first edition of a work by Vangelis – not very prodigal in concerts, on the other hand – in DVD format. In 2002, the single was published with the official anthem of the FIFA World Cup in Korea and Japan, composed and performed by the artist.

Rumors are also circulating about Vangelis’ participation in the Matrix Reloaded movie. It is not known if Vangelis had created original songs for it or if it was planned to use classic songs from his albums, although in the end the musician appears completely unrelated to the project.

In 2005, the original soundtrack of Alexander the Great (Alexander), by Oliver Stone, was released, a very ambitious work in which Vangelis’ sound is mixed with that of a complete symphony orchestra. One of its tracks, Roxanne’s Veil, had previously appeared on an album by Vanessa Mae, whose violin performs the main melody.

The Greek musician’s absence from the opening and closing ceremonies of the Athens Olympic Games the previous year was enigmatic, and apparently this was due to the work he was doing for Stone’s film. Alexander’s subsequent appearance, The Final Cut reveals that Vangelis’ score was much longer than that published on the album. Vangelis claims to be attracted from the beginning to this work by the obvious cultural heritage that, as a Greek, links him to the main character of the same

Throughout 2007, two new Vangelis albums appeared on the market, the first in homage to Blade Runner on the 25th anniversary of its release, and coinciding with the film and DVD re-release of its definitive version (the fifth). The album, called BR 25, expands the musical universe of the film with songs in which Roman Polanski, Oliver Stone and Ridley Scott collaborate, among other figures from the world of culture and international politics. It is part of a box set titled Blade Runner Trilogy, and also contains the 1994 album Blade Runner, along with a third disc with songs from the film never officially released.

The second work of 2007 is the original soundtrack of El Greco, a Spanish-Greek co-production about the life and work of the painter who gives it its title. It must be taken into account that the music contained in this album has nothing to do with that of El Greco from 1998. This work, published (in principle) only in Greece, represents the second collaboration of Vangelis with the director Yannis Smaragdis after Cavafy, for which he also composed his score.

In 2008, Vangelis contributes three new pieces of music for the opening and closing titles of Swiadectwo (or Testimony), a Polish documentary film about John Paul II.

During May 2012, a stage adaptation of Chariots of Fire directed by Edward Hall based on an adaptation by Mike Bartlett premiered at the Hampstead Theater in London. The same year Decca Records released the album under the title Chariots of Fire: The Play.?

In January 2013, rumors about his death circulated on the social networks Facebook and Twitter, which turned out to be absolutely false. The following year, in the summer of 2014, his older brother, Niko, who worked as a representative at The Forminx and was a producer for Pentagram, died.

On September 23, 2016, it was published? a new concept studio album, Rosetta,? inspired by the eponymous mission organized by the European Space Agency1 and the first original work -excluding soundtracks- since Mythodea (2001). On the occasion of its launch, a website was published that includes an arcade game inspired by classic games like Space Invaders.

In 2019 he released Nocturne, an album where he reinterprets many of his greatest hits alone on piano and with a couple of new songs.

In 2020 she would release her last studio album, Juno To Jupiter, which would be inspired by the Juno spacecraft mission to Jupiter. It features the voice of Angela Gheorghiu on 3 of the songs on the album.

At the beginning of 2022 he was hospitalized in France due to complications derived from Covid-19, dying on May 17, 2022 at the age of 79.

The collaborations

Vangelis’s many collaborations with other renowned artists (in addition to those already mentioned) are noteworthy. The most important are those he carried out with Jon Anderson, vocalist of the rock band Yes (who was on the verge of hiring him as a keyboardist, replacing Rick Wakeman), forming the duo Jon and Vangelis. This line-up is responsible for the albums Short Stories, The Friends of Mr. Cairo, Private Collection and Page of Life. Anderson also appears as a guest on the song So Long Ago, So Clear, included on Heaven and Hell, and on Opera Sauvage, in the final song of which he plays the harp. Such collaborations also include Demis Roussos and British jazz saxophonist Dick Morrissey, a frequent collaborator of both Anderson and Vangelis, notably on the popular Blade Runner Love Theme.

Likewise, Vangelis formed a duo with the singer and actress Irene Papas, publishing with her the albums Odes and Rapsodies, both dedicated to recovering for modernity the sounds of traditional Hellenic folklore, although the first focuses on popular songs of resistance. against the Ottoman push of past centuries, and the second, in aspects of the Greek Christian tradition.

Vangelis has also collaborated with Montserrat Caballé, Vanessa Mae, Caroline Lavelle, Demis Roussos, Melina Mercouri, Suzanne Ciani, Claudio Baglioni, Mariangela, Stina Nordenstam, Michael Hoppé, Richard Anthony, Michel Huygen (with whom he improvises live for Spanish Television), Milva, and even with the actor Sean Connery (who in the single Ithaca recites Cavafy’s poem of the same name).

“It is very gratifying for me to know that, over the years, this music seems to have given and still gives so much pleasure and conveys a feeling of optimism to so many people around the world. As always I am very grateful for your love and appreciation. “
-Vangelis, in the script of Chariots of Fire: The Play (2012).

Browse in the Library: