When you consider that "Les Feuilles Mortes" is one of the best-known songs in the French repertoire, you immediately have an idea of the importance of its composer, Joseph Kosma. An illustrious name in our cultural heritage, few people are aware that he is also the creator of a multitude of musical pieces in all forms.
The son of a schoolteacher and grandson of a pupil of Franz Liszt, Joseph learned to play the piano by ear. By instinct, he was able to reproduce fashionable tunes. By the age of ten, he was already able to improvise on silent films. By the age of twelve, he was writing an opera. After graduating from the National Academy of Music, he was appointed trainee at the Opera, where he worked with conductor Faglioni. But he soon preferred to follow Bertolt Brecht and his traveling theater, which enabled him to work with Kurt Weill, composer of the Threepenny Opera.
Monsieur Jacques. In 1933, he moved to Paris, where he accompanied singer Lys Gauty before meeting poet Jacques Prévert. Their first work together was called "La Belle Étoile", but no one wanted it. Eventually, Jean Renoir inherited it for his film Le Crime de Monsieur Lange.
At the same time, Kosma was entrusted with the score for La Grande Illusion. Between 1939 and 1945, he joined the Prévert team in the small medieval village of Tourrettes-sur-Loup, where they came into contact with the Resistance. He still found time to work on Le Soleil a toujours raison, an operetta starring Tino Rossi. In 1943, he prepared the music for Les Enfants du paradis. In 1946, his first show "l'École buissonnière" at the Salle Chopin was sold out every night. Joseph Kosma became one of the leading figures of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. In addition to magnificent songs popularized by Juliette Gréco (Si tu t'imagines, lyrics by Raymond Queneau, or La Fourmi, lyrics by Robert Desnos), Yves Montand (Barbara), Cora Vaucaire or the Frères Jacques, he also wrote music for film, theater and opera, such as Les Canuts, in 1959. Forever associated with the name Prévert, he put his talent as a subtle, fluid composer at the service of some of the most beautiful texts in French song.
