87 years ago today, on March 12, 1925, Georges Delerue was born in Roubaix (in the northern tip of France). The son of factory workers, he overcame severe back problems, early resistance in the conservatory, and the cultural stigma of composing for film and television to become one of the most respected and accomplished film composers of the twentieth century…first in France, then America.

I’m nearing the end of several months writing about Delerue’s career in Hollywood (from 1980 to his death in 1992), and he is foremost on my mind today. I fell in love with his music only five or six years ago. I was at work, listening to a streaming film music station. His suite from Rich in Love (his final score) came on, a tapestry of various solo instruments assuming the gorgeous central theme. As the guitar gently took the reins of the melody, I had to stop what I was doing to listen. It was a moment of pure, unplanned surrender—one of those moments I chase after in film music. It would be the first of many with Delerue.

I used that piece of music in the film I created for my wedding, under images of Alison and I during our dating years. It thus became very personal.

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I met Georges’ wife, Colette, the summer of my wedding, while writing liner notes for Georges’ score for Maxie. That experience, combined with my adoration of his music, led to the thesis I’m writing. (It is the final chapter of what I hope to be his complete biography). In speaking to his wife, daughters, friends, and colleagues—and listening to hours and hours of his work—I’ve only fallen more irretrievably under the spell of Georges Delerue. And while I wish I could have known him in life, I feel like I’ve met him through the warm glow of his friends’ recollections…and especially through his music. Many people have said that Georges was just like his music: gentle, sweet, nostalgic, and full of life.

Here is an excerpt from the thesis, to honor Georges on his birthday.

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If a melody is a story, as suggested by composer Frederick Talgorn, then Georges Delerue was one of the great storytellers of the twentieth century.

His early music rode the “New Wave” of French films in the 1960s, and he resisted the direction of serialism, atonality, and what he saw as the increasingly inaccessible avant-garde concert music of his era. Rather, he wrote music with a kind of timeless European sensibility—instantly evocative, with an evergreen visceral power. He gave supreme attention to melody, that most eternal of musical organisms. Each Delerue film score is characterized by at least one distinct and memorable theme, so lyrical in contour that many beg for words.

In film music’s long and often conflicted struggle for acceptance as a serious art form, Georges Delerue plays an interesting role. He brought a formal conservatory education and a mind steeped in centuries of music to bear in his writing for film. He was a master craftsman who poured all of his faculties into his music, from the first stage to the last. The result is that the scores he wrote transcend their initial function (to dramatize and underscore movies), and contain an intellect in their writing, a formality, and an internal logic. His music is one of the twentieth century’s most persuasive arguments that film (as a venue) is, or at least can be, the rightful heir of ballet and opera—if not the concert hall itself.

At the same time, Delerue fully submitted to the demands and commercial restrictions of his trade. He was a humble collaborator, serving the needs of film and director. He took his music seriously, but did not take himself too seriously. Even when he knew a film he was being offered was bad, he usually scored it anyway, because he simply loved to write music. He was a proud artist, but not an artiste. Unlike other film composers who chafed at the descriptive prefix “film,” people like Bernard Herrmann whose high opinion of their talents made them very particular about what projects they accepted and very difficult to work with, Delerue wasn’t picky. As long as he was putting on paper the music in his head (and getting along with the filmmakers), he was happy.

Thus, we have a body of film music from Delerue (to say nothing about his symphonies, operas, and other concert works) that is pure, lovingly constructed, influenced by the classical masters who preceded him yet markedly his own. “The greatest strength in Delerue’s music is that outside of the movies, it became pure,” said French film composer Alexandre Desplat. “It’s the kind of music I listen to. I can listen to Debussy, or Ravel, or Herrmann, or Rota, or Delerue without asking myself the question, ‘Is it film music or just music?’ No, it’s music.”

Last night I watched Inception again (it was only my second viewing). I was, once again, sucked headlong into Christopher Nolan’s engrossing dream—my heart and mind fully engaged in the cinematic thrill ride. The film only improved on its second viewing, and I sat in awe of Nolan’s imagination and its expert, artful execution.

I recently waxed grateful about Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, a film of such a caliber that several critics praised it as the reason cinema exists. And while Inception is, in many ways, a crowd-pleasing summer blockbuster—replete with huge special effects, car chases, and bulleted ski sequences—where The Tree of Life is a quiet, poetic art film, I believe they share in common that laudatory comment.

For in no other medium could you achieve the alchemy of magic that these films concoct. While most films are novels that have sprung to life or simply more open-spaced stage plays, these two works rely on the unique combination of moving images, music, and effects achieved only in film. Both are non-linear, moving in directions and in the order of a deeper level of the mind. The Tree of Life travels into the deep recesses of memory—biased, half-remembered, elusive. Inception transports us into the equally slippery and half-remembered channel of our dreams. How do you tell a story that is not only about memories and dreams, but one that evokes the very nature and feeling of those things?

Through the miracle of cinema, these films do just that—one quietly, the other with blaring brass. After watching The Tree of Life I felt as if I had been washed in the memories and potent emotions of my childhood. When Inception ends, it is like waking from a deep, dream-filled sleep. A good book can certainly possess hypnotic qualities; theatre, music, and art carry the power to transport. But only in cinema can there occur this incredible chemical reaction created by music, performance, visual art, and words. And while many films inspire, delight, and move, The Tree of Life and Inception are in that rarified class of the medium: the reason film exists.

I’ve just finished reading Aaron Copland’s brilliant little book, What to Listen for in Music, which breaks down this amorphous, elusive art form into something chewable. It’s essentially a textbook of basic music theory condensed into a very succinct, breezy paperback, with doses of humble commentary by the great American composer. A passage that especially sparked thoughts for me was the following:

Why is it that the typical music lover of our day is seemingly so reluctant to consider a musical composition as, possibly, a challenging experience?…Most people seem to resent the controversial in music; they don’t want their listening habits disturbed. They use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be used as a soporific…It is meant to stir and excite you, to move you—it may even exhaust you.

Copland’s statements are in the context of discussing the “contemporary music” of the 1950s—with its serialism, atonality, and the like. “Serious” concert music that defied the forms and palatable harmonies of times gone by. I admit that I’ve always held a very zealous attitude towards such music that would probably make Copland shake his head in professorial disappointment. I harbor very strong feelings of loathing toward music that wallows in atonality, that rejects traditional melodies, that attempts to redefine music as simply sound. But I’m afraid I’m rather picky, because I also don’t like the very traditional, very musical works of, say, Bach (too stuffy).

The reason I love film music so (though “film music,” as a genre, is quite an amorphous term) is because I love the sensibilities and language of 19th-century symphonic music that so many film scores speak in. I love strong melodies and clever development. I respond to the narrative structure of a good film score; it is a tone poem, an opera, and a symphony all in one. I love how a good film score tells me a story, dazzles my intellect, and gets stuck in my head. I guess those three criteria might, loosely, define why I listen to music. Or at least, why I listen to film music and why I prefer film music to all other forms.

The reasons I listen to “popular” music are different. Catharsis is probably the primary reason; channeling happiness, anger, falling in love, or a broken heart into a 3-minute experience that captures my feelings so well and so hummably. Another reason is the purely visceral, aesthetic pleasure of a catchy song—something to sing along with at my loudest volume or interact with physically (beating the rhythm on the nearest hard object or wailing on my air guitar). I suppose these reasons bleed into my reasons for listening to film music. Perhaps my motives are just as amorphous as everything else.