Antoine Duhamel
1925 - 2014
French
Biography
Antoine Duhamel, born on 30 July 1925, is the son of the writer Georges Duhamel and the actress Blanche Albane. A pupil of René Leibowitz and Olivier Messiaen, he has composed many works, mostly of vocal music – songs, oratorios and operas including Lundi Monsieur vous serez riche, L’Opéra des Oiseaux, Ubu à l’Opéra, Gambara, Le Transsibérien, Quatre-vingt-treize. He has also written incidental music for some hundred television and cinema films, collaborating with Godard, Truffaut, Follet and Tavernier; one of his greatest successes being Belle Époque directed by Fernando Trueba, which won the 1994 Oscar for the best foreign film. In 1980 he founded a music school in Villeurbanne, embracing all types of music. Antoine Duhamel is administrator of the SACEM (the French performing rights society) and a former president of the SNAC, the national writers’ and composers’ union.