I Dreamed A Dream
Claude-Michel Schonberg
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Browse piano sheets by Claude-Michel Schonberg on Zen Virtual Piano. Claude-Michel Schonberg was born in Vannes, France, in 1944, and initially pursued a career in popular music before moving to musical theatre. As a small boy growing up in Brittany, he played the piano and composed pieces for his mother, and dreamt of getting away from his little village on the coast to live in Paris and compose operas. To please his mother he went to university to study mathematics, but while there he formed a band and began writing songs. A boy who wrote pieces for his mother, then studied mathematics to please her, suggests a composer whose music started in the family before it reached a stage. The songs caught the attention of an EMI A&R man, which resulted in two singles and a job as an A&R assistant, and he briefly became a pop star with a huge hit in France, Le Premier Pas, which the BBC says is still played on the radio there today. Lifestyle Asia reports that he wrote most of the music for France’s first rock opera, La Révolution Française, in 1973, in which he played King Louis XVI. A pop hit set beside a rock opera suggests a composer trying more than one form before the stage became his main path. The Independent calls Alain Boublil and Schonberg’s partnership one of the most successful in musical history; it produced Les Miserables, Miss Saigon and Martin Guerre, and Martin Guerre won the 1996 Olivier Award for Best Musical. In 1987 the musical Les Misérables won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and a Grammy Award for Best Musical Cast Show Album. In 2013 Schönberg, Boublil and Herbert Kretzmer were recipients of the New York Chapter Recording Academy Honors as the Grammy-winning creators of Les Misérables. Honours for Les Misérables in 1987 and again in 2013 can be read as recognition that returned to the same work after more than twenty-five years. In a BBC interview, Claude-Michel said, “Oh ALWAYS the piano! Only the keyboard,” explaining that the whole show must work with him at the piano singing all the parts, because then it will be even better with a full orchestra and singers. In 2001 he composed his first ballet score, Wuthering Heights, which the Northern Ballet created in 2002, and his ballet Cleopatra, opening in 2011, was his second collaboration with David Nixon and his seventh complete score. In 2012 he co-wrote the screenplay and reconceived the music for the Les Misérables film. A show tested at the piano before it is orchestrated, set beside ballet scores and a film screenplay, can be read as a range of formats from one composer, with the stage show’s starting point at the keyboard.
Browse piano sheets by Claude-Michel Schonberg on Zen Virtual Piano.
Claude-Michel Schonberg was born in Vannes, France, in 1944, and initially pursued a career in popular music before moving to musical theatre. As a small boy growing up in Brittany, he played the piano and composed pieces for his mother, and dreamt of getting away from his little village on the coast to live in Paris and compose operas. To please his mother he went to university to study mathematics, but while there he formed a band and began writing songs. A boy who wrote pieces for his mother, then studied mathematics to please her, suggests a composer whose music started in the family before it reached a stage.
The songs caught the attention of an EMI A&R man, which resulted in two singles and a job as an A&R assistant, and he briefly became a pop star with a huge hit in France, Le Premier Pas, which the BBC says is still played on the radio there today. Lifestyle Asia reports that he wrote most of the music for France’s first rock opera, La Révolution Française, in 1973, in which he played King Louis XVI. A pop hit set beside a rock opera suggests a composer trying more than one form before the stage became his main path.
The Independent calls Alain Boublil and Schonberg’s partnership one of the most successful in musical history; it produced Les Miserables, Miss Saigon and Martin Guerre, and Martin Guerre won the 1996 Olivier Award for Best Musical. In 1987 the musical Les Misérables won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and a Grammy Award for Best Musical Cast Show Album. In 2013 Schönberg, Boublil and Herbert Kretzmer were recipients of the New York Chapter Recording Academy Honors as the Grammy-winning creators of Les Misérables. Honours for Les Misérables in 1987 and again in 2013 can be read as recognition that returned to the same work after more than twenty-five years.
In a BBC interview, Claude-Michel said, “Oh ALWAYS the piano! Only the keyboard,” explaining that the whole show must work with him at the piano singing all the parts, because then it will be even better with a full orchestra and singers. In 2001 he composed his first ballet score, Wuthering Heights, which the Northern Ballet created in 2002, and his ballet Cleopatra, opening in 2011, was his second collaboration with David Nixon and his seventh complete score. In 2012 he co-wrote the screenplay and reconceived the music for the Les Misérables film. A show tested at the piano before it is orchestrated, set beside ballet scores and a film screenplay, can be read as a range of formats from one composer, with the stage show’s starting point at the keyboard.
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Claude-Michel Schonberg
Common questions
Claude-Michel Schonberg, born in Vannes, France, in 1944, is a composer of musical theatre who created Les Misérables, Miss Saigon and Martin Guerre with Alain Boublil.
He formed a band while studying mathematics, had a brief career as a pop star with the French hit Le Premier Pas, and in 1973 wrote most of the music for the rock opera La Révolution Française.
In 1987 the musical won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and a Grammy Award for Best Musical Cast Show Album.
Yes, in 2001 he composed Wuthering Heights for the Northern Ballet, and his ballet Cleopatra opened in 2011.