Michel Legrand Quotes

My father shot himself took off when I was three years old [Mon père s'est tiré quand j'avais trois ans]. My mother had no real skills, we didn't have a penny, we were living in a fleabitten apartment. My father had left behind an old piano. My sister was already going to school, my mother was out working, and I stayed at home alone with my adorable grandmother who understood nothing I said. It was so boring that I stayed at the piano all day long, and that saved my life. Otherwise I would have leapt out the window. I would listen to something on the radio and try to tap out the melody, then the harmonies. Music did come to me by some decision or event, but because there was nothing else for me.
Michel Legrand

Here is how I work: when I think that a film needs to have a principal theme, I search for a melody. I have a very strange melodic gift: melodies come to me effortlessly. So I write melodies—thirty, forty, fifty—then I cast them off until I have just two or three. If only one is needed, I go see the director and ask him to decide. That happened one time with Jacques Demy for the duo of the twins [in Les demoiselles de Rochefort]: I went to his house in Noirmoutier to play 35 possible themes for him.
Michel Legrand