A Quote by Alexandre Desplat

I always wanted to be a film composer. So very early on I started collecting soundtracks and paying attention to how movie music works. Actually I'd like to have the opportunity to conduct for the rest of my life.
My parents had a lot of movie soundtracks that they brought back from the States. So very early on I heard film music at home.
I simply love Wagner's music. That actually started very early. He was the first composer I was exposed very much to because my parents introduced me to Wagner's music very early.
AC/DC, Def Leppard, Alice Cooper - I learned stories of all these guys. That's when I fell in love with Queen, which is one of my favorite bands of all time... I started paying attention to what made music good. I started paying attention to why I liked it.
I'd love to do a musical actually. My background is in music. I have a bachelors in music. I thought that I was going to be a composer, long ago when I first started. So it was amazingly fun to do those two routines in the film.
My pieces usually are programmed on concerts in which the other works are standard repertoire. My music always sounds very different when it's on a concert of all contemporary music. It always seems to stick out at an odd angle. This also makes me think of a question I sometimes debate with my friends: does the music of a composer directly reflect that composer's personality? This is a difficult one, but I think it usually does.
I'll probably always write film scores. It's the one place where a composer has almost unlimited resources at his beck and call. When music you have written works well in a film, nothing can beat it.
I started playing guitar at the age of 8 or 9 years. Very early, and I was like already into pop music and was just trying to copy what I heard on the radio. And at a very early age I started experimenting with old tape recorders from my parents. I was 11 or 12 at that time and then when I was like 14 or 15 I had a punk band. I made all the classic rock musician's evolutions and then in the early nineties I bought my first sampler and that is how I got into electronic music, because I was able to produce it on my own. That was quite a relief.
The way I like to think about it is, even though I started music early - I started in classical music - it wasn't until I discovered jazz that I really fell in love with music and realized this was what I wanted to do for a living.
The only outlet in mainstream culture for classical and more experimental music to be heard is through movie soundtracks, and they're such a wonderful display of emotion. I think the guy that did that best is Stanley Kubrick, working with Wendy Carlos who is an electronic composer.
I tried too much and too hard to get people to pay attention to what I was doing, and so paying less attention to what I actually wanted to do. It's something you see a lot with very young bands who are desperate to get a record deal so they're trying to sound like something else.
I always wanted to be a composer, and I sort of went in to NYU as pre-med because I just thought, 'Well... who actually becomes a composer?'
Music critics have made it quite clear that any composer who ever contributed a four-bar jingle to a film was to be referred to as a 'Hollywood composer' from then on, even if the rest of his output were to consist solely of liturgical organ sonatas.
When I'm writing film music, I feel like I'm more a filmmaker than a composer. It's more about what the film needs. I'm basically part of the team that's creating a film, and the music is a very important part, but it's just one part of many.
I'd say for a film composer, 'Star Wars' is kind of like the holy grail of film music. It's probably the best film music ever written.
I feel like people who actually know how music works on a technical level need to explain it to the rest of us a little more often.
I think that if I were required to spend the rest of my life on a desert island, and to listen to or play the music of any one composer during all that time, that composer would almost certainly be Bach.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!