Jean Prodromidès (3 July 1927 – 17 March 2016) was a French composer. He was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1927 in a music-loving family. His father, of Greek origin, had a pianola by which he became familiar with works of Beethoven and Wagner. He was a pupil of René Leibowitz, who introduced him to dodecaphonic and serial composition. Together with other Leibowitz pupils, Serge Nigg, Antoine Duhamel and André Casanova, he gave the first performance of Leibowitz's Explications des Metaphors, Op. 15, in Paris in 1948.
Prodromidès composed for films such as Maigret et l'Affaire Saint-Fiacre and Danton. Prodromidés was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1990 to Henry Sauguet's seat; Prodromidès was also president of the Academy and the Institut de France in 2005.
Selected filmography
1956: Les biens de ce monde
1959: Archimède le clochard
1960: The Baron of the Locks (a.k.a. Le Baron de l'écluse) 1960: Le Voyage en ballon (a.k.a. Stowaway in the Sky) 1960: Blood and Roses (a.k.a. Et mourir de plaisir) 1967: Pillaged (a.k.a. Mise à sac), dir. Alain Cavalier 1969 Salome , dir. Pierre Karolnik 1983: Danton, dir. Andrzej Wajda
References
Discography
Prodromidès's complete score, Le Voyage en ballon, has been released on CD by Disques Cinémusique in 2009. More information here.