Maurice Thiriet
Maurice Thiriet was born 2 May 1906 in Meulan (France). He enrolled at the Paris conservatory in 1925 and studied under Charles Koechlin (counteroint, fugue), Alexia Roland-Manuel (orchestration), Emile Schwartz (solfege) and Charles Silver (harmony). He completed his studies in 1931 and then focussed on a career as a composer. A first success his ballet "La Nuit venitienne" that was performed at the Paris Opera in 1939. In 1940 Maurice Thiriet was drafted for military service in World War II. He was captured very soon and imprisoned at the prisoner-of-war camp Stalag IX A (together with Jean Martinon and Raymond Gallois-Montbrun!), but released in 1941. He returned to Paris where he hid his composer colleague Manuel Rosenthal from the Nazi occupants. His work "Oedipe-Roi" for narrator, choir and orchestra, composed during his detention, was premiered in Paris in 1942 with Jean Cocteau as narrator, the Chorale Yvonne Gouverne and the Orchestre de la Societe des Concerts du Conservatoire under Charles Münch.
The following years and decades of Maurice Thiriet seemed to be less unsettling. There is little information about him beside the fact that he continued to compose and over the years made his mark as a composer of especially film music and ballets. He also composed chamber music, songs, orchestral music, a flute and a harp concerto, but today is best remembered for film and stage music. Maurice Thiriet composed 13 ballets during his lifetime as well as music for over 150 films. Among these works are the film music for "Children of Paradise" (together with Joseph Kosma) or "Le Bataillon du ciel" (together with Manuel Rosenthal) or the ballets "L'oeuf a la coque" and "Deuil en vingt quatre Heurs" by Roland Petit.
Maurice Thiriet died on 28 September 1972 in Puys-Bracquemont (France).
Atout coeur
In my possession is the autograph full score of the ballet "Atout coeur" by Maurice Thiriet. The ballet was composed in 1959 for a performance of the Ludmilla Tcherina Ballet. The premiere took place on 18 February 1959 at the Theatre Sarah-Bernhardt in Paris in a choreography by Don Lurio. Further performances for example were danced later that year at the Cambridge Theatre in London where it run under the title "Hearts are trumps".
The full score consists of 87 pages, all clean and accurate written in ink. Then the scores breaks up and is completed by a rushing hand in pencil. At the end of the score the composer wrote "completed with greatest care on 12 February 1959 at 4.45' am". That fits with the overall picture of the score. Curiously Maurice Thiriet wrote the mentioned words not in French below his score but in Croatian: "krajnjim nepozom dovršeno 12. veljače 59 u 4.45' ujutro". I found no explanation for this.
In addition to the full score I also own the handwritten parts of a performance.
