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Film music composer Maurice Jarre attended the University of Lyons, then went to Paris, where he studied engineering at the Sorbonne before entering the Paris Conservatoire to study composition and percussion. He became musical director of the Théâtre National Populaire and composed his first film score for the short Hôtel des Invalides in 1951. He worked mostly on short films through the mid-'50s before graduating to mostly full-length features in the late '50s. By the early '60s, he had begun to attract international attention, getting assignments from British and American directors, and with that he embarked on a remarkably prolific career that found him scoring an average of over three films per year during the 40-year period 1960-1999. Jarre's first major international success came with British director David Lean's 1962 epic Lawrence of Arabia. The soundtrack album containing the composer's appropriately lush and exotic music just missed topping the American LP charts, and when...