André Hodeir was a French violinist, composer, arranger

Arrangement

The American Federation of Musicians defines arranging as "the art of preparing and adapting an already written composition for presentation in other than its original form. An arrangement may include reharmonization, paraphrasing, and/or development of a composition, so that it fully represents...

 and musicologist

Musicology

Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...

.

Biography

André Hodeir was born in Paris. His initial training was as a classical violinist and composer. He studied at the Conservatoire de Paris

Conservatoire de Paris

The Conservatoire de Paris is a college of music and dance founded in 1795, now situated in the avenue Jean Jaurès in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, France...

, where he took Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...

's analysis class, and won first prizes in fugue, harmony, and music history. While pursuing these studies, he discovered jazz, and embarked on an exploration of all music forms, jazz as well as classical.

Hodeir was a founder, in 1954, and director of Jazz Groupe de Paris, made up of nine musicians, including Bobby Jaspar

Bobby Jaspar

Bobby Jaspar was a cool jazz and hard bop saxophonist, flautist and composer born in Liège, Belgium. He was married to the jazz singer Blossom Dearie....

, Pierre Michelot

Pierre Michelot

Pierre Michelot was a French bebop and hard bop double bass player.Born in Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis, Paris, Michelot studied piano from 1936 until 1938, but switched to playing bass at the age of sixteen...

 and Nat Peck

Nat Peck

Nat Peck is an American jazz trombonist.Nat Peck was born in New York City. He played with Glenn Miller and Don Redman early in his career...

. He was the author of two books of Essais (1954 and 1956), of numerous film scores, including Le Palais Idéal by Ado Kyrou, the Jazz Cantata for the film Chutes de pierres, danger de mort by Michel Fano, etc. Hodeir was the founder of his own orchestra during the Sixties (Catalyse, Arte della commedia dell, Transplantation, Crepuscule with Nelly, etc., available in an album by Martial Solal

Martial Solal

Martial Solal is a French jazz pianist and composer, who is probably most widely known for the music he wrote for Jean-Luc Godard's debut feature film À bout de souffle .-Biography:...

, in 1984). He composed, in 1966, the monumental jazz cantata Anna Livia Plurabelle, on James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

's text, and in 1972 of Bitter Ending

Bitter Ending

Bitter Ending, is a recording of a work for eight voices composed by Andre Hodeir as commissioned by Ward Swingle. The work is performed by the Swingle Singers with a jazz quintet...

, by The Swingle Singers

The Swingle Singers

The Swingle Singers are a mostly a cappella vocal group formed in 1962 in Paris, France by Ward Swingle with Anne Germain, Jeanette Baucomont, Jean Cussac and others. Christiane Legrand, the sister of composer Michel Legrand, was the group's lead soprano through 1972. Until 2011 the group...

 and a jazz quintet, on the final monologue of Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...

 .

Discography

• 1954 : The Vogue
  Disques Vogue
  Disques Vogue was founded in France in 1947, the same year that the USA Vogue closed shop. They originally specialized in jazz recordings, featuring such artists as Sidney Bechet, Django Reinhardt, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, and Errol Garner. In the late 1950s Vogue expanded into pop music,...
  
   Sessions (BMG, R/1999)
• 1956 : Le Jazz Groupe de Paris joue André Hodeir (coll. Jazz in Paris, Universal, R/2001)
• 1957 : The Alphabet et autres essais (not available on CD)
• 1959 : Kenny Clarke
  Kenny Clarke
  Kenny Clarke , born Kenneth Spearman Clarke, nicknamed "Klook" and later known as Liaqat Ali Salaam, was a jazz drummer and an early innovator of the bebop style of drumming...
  
  's Sextet joue André Hodeir (coll. Jazz in Paris, Universal, R/2002)
• 1960 : Jazz et jazz (coll. Jazz in Paris, Universal, R/2004)
• 1966 : Anna Livia Plurabelle (second version Patrice Caratini in 1994, Label Bleu)
• 1972 : Bitter Ending (not available on CD)
• 1984 : Martial Solal
  Martial Solal
  Martial Solal is a French jazz pianist and composer, who is probably most widely known for the music he wrote for Jean-Luc Godard's debut feature film À bout de souffle .-Biography:...
  
  et son orchestre jouent André Hodeir (Carlyne Music, 1984)

External links

, Christian Tarting, in French.