Maurice Jarre (1924-2009)

I was a) too lazy and b) too tired to post this last night, and I apologize. Maurice Jarre passed away early yesterday morning.

To be honest, his passing doesn't hit me quite as hard as when Jerry Goldsmith and Shirley Walker left, but it is quite tragic (though, at 84, he wasn't long for this world).

I knew him primarily as the guy who wrote the Lawrence of Arabia theme. Then, a couple years back, I happened upon the soundtrack of No Way Out. I still think of it as a nice bit of synth scoring, with the best moments in the opening and closing titles.

Then, last year, a very talented YouTube poster, benydebney, assembled a collection of Jarre's best scores. Repeated listenings have converted me. On a whim last fall, I picked up a collection of Jarre's scores. It's really helped me to appreciate what I've been missing out on. Another Jarre piece (and, perhaps, my favorite piece of music to emerge from his pen) came from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome:



As I love the ondes martenot, I was quite surprised to find that Jarre used it so extensively, from A Passage to India to Jacob's Ladder, making it all the more unfortunate that I didn't discover him sooner. He will be missed.