Claude-Michel Schonberg

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 23 March 2003

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the composer of the hit musicals Les Miserables and Miss Saigon, Claude-Michel Schönberg. Claude-Michel always knew he would be a composer. As a small boy growing up in Brittany he would play the piano and compose pieces for his mother. He dreamt of getting away from his little village on the French coast and going to live in Paris and compose operas.

To please his mother Claude-Michel went to University to study mathematics, but whilst he was there he formed a band and began writing songs. They caught the attention of an EMI A&R man which resulted in two singles and a job for Claude-Michel as an A&R assistant. Claude-Michel enjoyed a brief career as a pop star, when he had a huge hit in France with Le Premier Pas (The first date) - a song that is still played on the radio there today. During this time he had met lyricist Alain Boublil who had been impressed with his pop songs and both were keen to take on a bigger project. The result was La Révolution Française which did moderately well in France. The duo perfected their skills when they went on to create the hugely successful musicals Les Miserables, Miss Saigon and Martin Guerre.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Beim Schlagengehen by Richard Strauss Book: All the Little Live Things by Wallace Earle Stegner Luxury: Grand piano

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 2003, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a composer, a Frenchman he's earned his reputation in a field for which his countrymen are not particularly renowned, the musical.
0:32.0	This exceptional talent has made him are not particularly renowned, the musical.
0:32.9	This exceptional talent has made him a multi-millionaire
0:36.0	thanks to shows such as Les Miserable, Miss Saigon,
0:39.2	and Martin Gerre.
0:41.2	The death of his father when he was 14 forced him to earn money, writing, playing and
0:46.0	singing music.
0:47.5	He studied maths at university to please his mother, but soon returned to his first love, music,
0:53.0	eventually teeming up with the lyricist Al-Am Bublil,
0:56.0	with whom he's written all his great successes.
0:58.8	I don't know how I do it, he says, and I don't want to know.
1:01.7	I was born to be a composer I didn't have the choice
1:04.9	he is claud Michel Schoenberg so what happens when you do it claud Michel do you just
1:11.5	sit down and turn on the tap and out it pause?
1:14.4	It's not so easy.
1:16.0	I have to sit down at the piano the same way I'm sitting down in a theater.
1:20.4	And I close my eyes and I'm thinking what's going to happen on stage and generally speaking if I
1:27.8	Start to see something the music is coming which is why you don't know where it comes from as you say it's instinctive.
1:35.0	You don't know whether it's God or the devil or something from a former life that gives you this this talent, this ability to write the music here.
1:42.0	I don't know from where it's coming and I don't want to
	...

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