Scherzo for piccolo and piano

Georges Auric (1899 - 1983) was a prolific French composer, known as a member of the famous group of composers Les Six in the early 1920s. Auric was its most active member, and Cocteau and Satie acted as the group’s promoters and mentors. During these years Auric was associated with Sergey Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes company. He contributed to Cocteau’s collaborative Les Mariés de la tour Eiffel, and collaborated with Bronislava Nijinska in Les Fâcheux.
His interests were not limited to music. He had unlimited access to the personal library of Louis Combes which enabled him to broaden his knowledge of literature and poetry. He came to appreciate painting and literature as much as music. His discovery of literature that, at such a young age, aroused his interest in vocal music and setting poems to music and greatly shaped his transdisciplinary compositional method.
In 1930s he actively started to write music for films, gradually gaining popularity. By 1935 he abandoned the elitist and highly referential attitudes in favour of a populist approach, becoming associated with leftist groups.
Before World War II he was known music critic as well. After the War he continued to write music for films, gaining fame for his score of British historical romantic drama "Moulin Rouge".
In 1962, he gave up writing for motion pictures when he became director of the Opéra National de Paris and then chairman of SACEM, the French Performing Rights Society.
However, Auric continued to write classical chamber music, especially for winds, right up to his death.