CALL FOR PAPERS
« Au creux du souvenir… trois petites notes de musique ». A Tribute to Georges Delerue (1925-1992)
International Conference organized by Chloé Huvet (Université d’Évry Paris-Saclay) and Jérôme Rossi (Université Lumière Lyon 2)
Hosted by the University of Évry Paris-Saclay (France), April 10-11, 2025
2025 will mark the 100th anniversary of Georges Delerue’s birth. Hosted by the University of Evry, this international conference pays tribute to one of the most prolific composers of French cinema, who won three César awards for his scores to Préparez vos mouchoirs (Bertrand Blier, 1978), L’Amour en fuite (François Truffaut, 1979) and Le Dernier Métro (Truffaut, 1980). Despite the existence of a few biographies, the musician is still little represented in academic literature. The conference aims to reflect on existing research on the composer and to lay new foundations for the study of his work.
It is to this immense and abundant body of work, marked by tensions between artistic demands and commercial necessities, short forms and symphonic development, popular melodies and atonality, and songs and operatic vocality, that we wish to devote this conference-tribute. Proposals for papers should seek to highlight the main traits of Delerue’s work and his artistic collaborations, focusing on the following (non-exhaustive) topics:
- artistic duos: study of the tandem, permanent or more temporary, formed by Delerue with directors (of all nationalities);
- salient characteristics of Delerue’s compositional style and aesthetic approach (the search for the “beautiful melody,” a taste for Baroque language, a general rejection of synthesizers) situated in their context — music for concert, live performance, or screen arts;
- study of the “extra-filmic” and “filmic intramusicalities” of Delerue’s work ;
- study of the singularity of Delerue’s writing in relation to the musical conventions of cinematographic genres and the history of music in French, American, and British cinemas;
- musical and audiovisual intertextualities: analysis of the use of Delerue’s music in other films, such as the famous theme of Camille from Le Mépris, used in Casino (Martin Scorsese, 1995), or the theme associated with Barbara and Julien from Vivement dimanche !, used in 2046 (Wong Kar Wai, 2004);
- study of Delerue’s compositions for radio and television;
- studies of Delerue’s concert and stage works;
- reception and legacy of Delerue’s music.
Proposals of no more than 400 words should be submitted to Chloé Huvet (chloe.huvet@univ-evry.fr) and Jérôme Rossi (jerome.rossi@univ-lyon2.fr) no later than September 30, 2024. Paper proposals must include a title, an abstract, and a short biography.
The languages accepted for the conference are French and English.
Conference website for more information: https://delerue.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/id/1