André Hossein on YT with playlists featuring his film and concert music as well as an interesting radio show in Farsi where you can actually listen to Hossein's speaking voice (for example listen to segment at 4:36, there are many more). Highly recommended:
Depending on where you live you'll need VPN to access all videos as many are blocked in various regions. I think in Japan you'll have the full lists at your disposal without any problems.
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EDIT: 06/04/2021 - I've found and posted an English transcript of this 1973 show in my newest post of today (see below).
Cool! I'll have to find the time to check this out. I like what I've heard of Hossein's music (his Sheherezade is excellent) and I made sure to touch upon him briefly while discussing Iranian film composers and their music in Part 2 of my interview with Iranian film music scholar Nasrollah Davoodi on my podcast The Goldsmith Odyssey (unlike the other composers we discuss, of course, he was not active in Iran as a film composer but in France instead).
Approximate English Translation: INTERVIEW WITH AMINOLLAH HOSSEIN (1973) PART ONE
(Excerpt from Hossein’s Arya Symphony)
Narrator: (After a poetic introduction on the legacy of the Persian Empire) …For sixty years, Aminollah Hossein lived far from Iran and the Farsi language, in Russia, Germany, and France, and yet he can still speak in his mother tongue. Let us listen to his voice, to the childhood memories and the Farsi-speaking of an Iranian who has not seen his country for so many years.
Hossein: My birthplace was in Turkistan, in Samarkand**. I learned Farsi as a child, and we spoke Farsi at home; so I have always spoken Farsi, although I have forgotten some of it…
(Excerpt from Persian Miniatures- L’Armée des Sables)
Narrator: Sixty-eight years ago [in 1905] Hossein was born in Samarkand.** He was the son of a man named Ahmad Hossein. Later (in Russia) their family name Hossein became Hosseinov; and when the family later returned to Iran, the name was again changed, from Hosseinov to Amiri. (**because at the time of their move, Russian-sounding names were not favored upon by Reza Shah.)
Hossein: Then I went to Moscow for my high school studies. Upon the completion of my studies, in 1922, I left Moscow and came to Berlin. Although I studied the violin in Moscow, in Berlin, my musical studies came to a halt.
Narrator: Hossein went to Berlin to study medicine, but his heart was full of music. Nothing but music agreed with his spirit.
Hossein: They [Hossein’s family] wrote to me that I should study medicine, but medicine was not in my nature / I had no propensity toward this profession.
Narrator: Hossein first learned music from his mother. In his household, music and poetry were held in the highest regard. His grandfather’s home was full of books about Persian poets and recordings of Persian music, such that the young Aminollah Hossein hummed the tar melodies of Darvish Khan.
(Excerpt from tar playing of Aminollah Hossein)
Hossein: When I was a child, I loved to whistle. We had a grammophone player, and we played mostly recordings of Iranian music. For example—I can still remember—the tar-playing of Darvish Khan, and the singing of Haj Hossein Gholi Khan.
Narrator: Tradition was sacred to Hossein’s life and music. Hossein found his role in introducing Persian music to the outside world.
(Excerpt from Hossein’s “Caravan” )
Hossein: I used Saadi’s verse: “Oh, Caravan-driver, Go slowly. You are taking the calm of my soul (my beloved) away from me.” Our music cannot be constantly kept in a cage. We need to open the cage and throw our Persian music out into the world.”
Narrator: Hossein stayed for four years in Berlin, continuing his musical studies with Artur Schnabel and Wilhelm Klatte. In 1942, he married Anna Minevski (Minevskaya.) Hossein was the first Iranian composer to graduate from the Paris Conservatory, where he studied composition with Noel Gallon and Paul Vidal, and piano with Alfred Cortot.
(Excerpt from Paysage d’été from the Mosaics Suite, op. 19)
Narrator: Hossein believes that the inspiration/intuition of the artist is separate from his technical ability at his instrument.
*******
Hossein: What is music? Music has to touch our spirit. Music is elhaam (elhaam=inspiration/revelation/intuition/imagination.) If there is no inspiration (elhaam) involved, then you must agree that we are no longer dealing with music. Why? Because humans need music. It is something innate in us. Just as we need food, we also need spiritual food. Today, we are trapped by materialism. When you are caught up in the superficial, material world, you cannot create transcendent music.
Narrator: Hossein loves Iran, and despite being away from his country for years, he cannot forget the culture, history and music of his homeland. Hossein: When I wanted to compose the Persepolis symphony, I had to be in the Iranian state of mind. In all of the works I have written, you can detect their Iranian roots.
(Excerpt from Persepolis Symphony)
Narrator: In 1941, Hossein started to compose his “Ruins of Persepolis” Symphony. Five years later, in 1946, he completed it and premiered it with the Orchestre Lamoureux. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestre_Lamoureux and in 1951, it was performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. This work is moving and sad, and is divided into four movements.
Hossein: If you listen to the first part, it shows the ruined columns and my grief/tears. Then, it’s as though I see the ruins come to life, and the dignitaries come to pay their respects to Darius the Great. Then, the third part….it’s very personal. The complaining and the sorrow transforms to hope, hope for the future, and then the symphony ends.
Narrator: Hossein’s deep feeling and love for Persian culture and traditions stemmed from his childhood.
PART TWO Hossein: There was an Iranian gentleman, an expert in Persian poetry; I can’t recall his name now; I worked with him a lot. He would read me poems by Saadi, Hafez, Obeyd Zakani…I remember when he first recited Rumi’s verse “Listen to the reed (net) and the tale it tells, how it sings of separation: ‘Ever since they cut me from the reed bed, my plaintive notes have moved men and women to tears.’” —These words immediately grabbed me. I still remember these poems from memory.
(Excerpt from Prelude No. 1 “Homage to Omar Khayyam”)
Narrator: Hossein’s music is poetic and programmatic (descriptive), pure and folkloric. Although Hossein lived and worked amidst the bustling crowds and noise of Paris, he is in love with nature.
(Excerpt from Au Jardin d’Iran)
Hossein: “I need nature. I am a child of nature. Observe the flowers, hear the song of the nightingale…Our life becomes more and more artificial each day. We are becoming increasingly artificial, and nobody has time to look at nature. In today’s world, we are distancing ourselves from nature.”
Narrator: “Between the struggle for life, and the mystery of creation, there is a great distance. In order to sustain himself financially, Hossein poured his vast ability and expertise into commissions. Although he composed many excellent film scores, his classical/orchestral compositions hold a different meaning for him.
(Excerpt from Hossein’s Piano Concerto No. 1)
Beauty has a spiritual meaning for Hossein. For Hossein, true beauty is timeless and eternal. He equates beauty with nature, the gift from the heavens. He grieves that today’s society has lost its respect for nature.”
(Excerpt from Au Jardin d’Iran)
Hossein: When I am in the wilderness, I find everything to be beautiful. The sound of that water, the sound of those ducks, those birds—they are all beautiful for me, because they are part of nature. If I wanted to hear natural music, I would go into nature. The best music comes from nature. But these artificial sounds that we extract—I cannot say that these sounds are beautiful. When you hear these artificial, electronic sounds, how do they affect you? You enter a zone that has nothing to do with this beautiful life. The artificial music of today has completely wilted/weakened (pajmorde) people. It wilts people, and as a result, life itself wilts.
Narration: Hossein’s imagination takes flight in this sphere of the Eastern mythologies, especially Persian mythologies. In this journey, the 1001 nights—the collection of the Shahrzad’s stories of the East—looms large.
(Excerpt from Persian Miniautres- (L’Appel du Souvenir)
Narrator: Amongst Hossein’s most well-known compositions is his monumental orchestral work, the Persian Miniatures. Hossein depicts a great spirit, a spirit that reveals itself from the depth of Persian history, and is proudly passed on from one generation to the next. This music evokes the clearest/most celestial blue sky imaginable, and the hard and dry Iranian soil, a soil from which the most beautiful red flowers in the world flourish.
(Excerpt from Persian Miniatures- Invitation au Sortilege)
Narrator: In the ancient Persian mythology, a poet recites the history of his homeland, an epic interlaced with benevolence and regret; an epic that reaches, at the end, the realm of solitude and tranquility, the realm of the mysteries of life and death.
(Excerpt from Persian Legend)
Narrator: Hossein has created all his compositions with love, and he cannot prefer one creation over another.
Hossein: It’s as if you have been asked, “Who is your favorite child?” I love all of my compositions, just as a mother loves all of her children.
(Persian Legend Continued)
Narrator: Hossein would like to visit his homeland through his music, through his hands. He does not want to be a distant story for Iranians. Let us hear, in his own words, his feelings toward his country and his people.
Hossein: I love the people of Iran and I love Iran. Naturally, if you love Iran, then you love its people. And I truly regret that life unfolded for me in such a way that I lived far from Iran, and could not travel there.
—— End
EDIT (08/24/21):
All Hossein segments (see English translation above) are bundled in this video (with subtitles in English, also available in German, French, Spanish, and Italian):
The first I heard of him was when i saw his son's 'spaghetti' western, the superb 'Cemetery without Crosses', a few years ago. Cemetery was in discussion just a few weeks ago here on another thread, where it made a number of peoples top spaghetti westerns, despite it not really being a spaghetti. Hossein's score did a good job. I would recommend fans of westerns to see out the film. It really is very very good.
Note: The above segments with Hossein's voice are now subtitled in English (see embedded video). You may find it interesting to actually get a sense of what he has to say. More subtitles in other languages will be added later.
Train d'enfer aka Operation Double Cross is a 1965 French-Italian-Spanish co-production directed by Gilles Grangier. The action film stars Jean Marais and Marisa Mell. The film is based on the novel "Combat de nègres" by René Cambon.
André Hossein composed the original score. His music remains unreleased.
The film was only a modest box office success in France. It was distributed in several other European countries with considerable promotional efforts in Spain, Italy, Germany and Austria.
For years this spy movie remained little seen, and it was very hard to find.
Just recently, the film has been released on BD by Coin de mire cinéma. Finally.
Here is the trailer featuring snippets of Hossein's jazzy score.
"La nuit des espions" (English: The night of spies; US title “Double Agents” aka “Night Encounter”) is a French-Italian film directed by Robert Hossein and released in 1959.
Marina Vlady: Her, Helen Gordon Robert Hossein: He, Philip Davis Michel Etcheverry as the German officer Robert Le Béal as the British colonel Michèle Dufour as Elga Kiel Roger Crouzet: Lieutenant Lindorff Clément Harari as Hans Georges Vitaly: the radio
During the Second World War, two spies, He and She, meet in a mountain chalet. Each doubts the other's true identity, he in SS uniform, she in civilian clothes: are they British, German? The couple goes through extreme feelings, from love to violence. Their harrowing tête-à-tête comes to a tragic end...
Marina Vlady remembers: " Double Agents, which takes place in a single set built for this purpose by Rino Mondellini, absolutely had to be made in July 1959. [...] This thriller, which Robert had been working on for many months, needed to be shot in the manner of a play (for which he would be criticized). [...] The ingenuity of the stage set-up makes it possible to have multiple locations thanks to the moving of partitions, the unfolding of black curtains to allow the camera to move away in long dollies, or, on the contrary, to open up like a box or a book, and then close it completely on the two actors. We shoot in sequences. [...] At the time, shooting a feature film in five weeks was a tour de force: but Gaumont, which produced, would only agree to this condition. Robert and I were co-producers, which means that, as usual, we invested all our work and never saw a single cent of it come back to us. Technically, the shooting is acrobatic: a lot of text, movements to the millimetre, low lighting that creates an intense and beautiful image. [...] In August 1959O, to present “Double Agents”, our arrival by helicopter on Saint Mark's Square in Venice caused a great stir.
This was the last film in which Robert Hossein directed his wife Marina Vlady before their divorce.
André Hossein, Robert Hossein's father, composed the film music under his pseudonym André Gosselain. Marc Lanjean conducts the orchestra. A selection of this score was released on record at the time. A 45 rpm EP consisting of two pieces: 1) the "Valse Romantique" with the voice of Marina Vlady and 2) the "Marche Militaire". In fact, these are sequences of several rather short pieces. The music was never released in its entirety on record, and the 45 rpm programme was not later reissued on vinyl or CD.
The Menace (original title La menace) is a 1960 French-Italian feature film in black and white by director Gérard Oury. The screenplay was written by Frédéric Dard, Alain Poiré and the director. It is based on the novel "Les Mariolles" by Frédéric Dard. The main roles are played by Robert Hossein, Marie-José Nat and Elsa Martinelli. The film was first released in France on March 1, 1961. In the Federal Republic of Germany, the film had its premiere on 20 July 1970 on Second German Television.
André Hossein composed the original music. Six selections were released on a 45 rpm EP. Hossein’s score is jazzy -- contemporary music written for a smaller ensemble. The orchestra leader is not named on the release, and I’m unsure if Hossein actually conducted the orchestra himself. Of special interest is his jazz-rock piece “Les marioles”. The music is very close to some of the music composed by Jean Constantin for the François Truffaut film “Les 400 coups” (400 Blows) released in 1959. More than 20 years later, Serge Gainsbourg would borrow the same music for a song he had written for Jane Birkin called “Haine pour aime”, released on the 1983 album “Baby alone in Babylone”. Curiously, neither Hossein nor Gainsbourg credit Constantin.
The cast: Marie-José Nat : Josépha Robert Hossein : Savary Elsa Martinelli : Lucile Paolo Stoppa : Cousin Robert Dalban : l'inspecteur Gauthier André Cellier : le commissaire Gérard Oury : le docteur Henri Tisot : Jérôme
The story: Seventeen-year-old Josepha doesn't like the life of her drunkard uncle in the small town, who has a better (theatre) past. Her wish to join the scooter club of the "gang", a group of harmless, loudly behaving adolescents, is not fulfilled because she does not own a scooter. Then she meets the newly arrived pharmacist Savary, whose advances both attract and repel her. She asks him for money. Savary generously lends her the amount needed to buy a motorbike. Although Josepha now becomes a member of the "gang", she does not feel happy. A girl belonging to this group is killed, and Josepha, just to impress, names the perpetrator: Savary. The pharmacist denies it and Josepha, after talking to the accused's wife, admits that she lied. By chance, however, she finds evidence in the pharmacist's car that points to his perpetration.The police now no longer believe her; but Savary's wife has become alert and is able to prevent a second murder at the last minute.
What the critics had to say: “Suspenseful crime thriller, staged in the style of the [West German] "Halbstarken" films, but striving for depth in milieu and character drawing and not without interest in human nature." (Dictionary of International Film) "A crime film visibly striving for depth, which, however, despite good performances by the actors, is not entirely convincing either in its drawing of the murderer or in its description of the lifestyle and milieu of the adolescents." (Evangelischer Filmbeobachter)
If you have problems accessing those clips use VPN as some videos may be blocked in your region:
École buissonnière (From "Les 400 coups") -- the repetitive motive in question starts at 0:23:
Comment voulez-vous ? (From "Les 400 coups") -- it starts with the romantic theme (also turned into a song), then the melody leads to the fast and repetitive motive (starting at 0:53) soon to be borrowed by Hossein, and, about 20 years later also by Gainsbourg:
Comment voulez-vous ? (From "Les 400 coups"):
The repetitive motive by Constantin returns in a slower mode at 0:38 -- "Balzac et gymnastique" (From "Les 400 coups")
Jane Birkin, "Haine pour aime" (Hate for love) (1983) – music by Gainsbourg, arranged by Alan Hawkshaw:
A general remark affecting some contents on YouTube.
Until a few months ago, lots of albums of Hossein's were readily available.
Not anymore. Shéhérazade, for instance, is now blocked almost everywhere on the world with the sole exceptions of Kosovo, Northern Cyprus and Somaliland.
Basic VPN no longer works either to access that.
So, a lot of Hossein's music isn't available anymore. The videos are still up on YouTube but they are blocked as I said.
At least there are still some remaining, especially all the vinyl rips done by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF).
"Clara, mon grain de blé" (Clara, my grain of wheat) from the 1965 film "Le chant du monde" (The song of the world), sung by Tino Rossi.
Cover version from the film song.
Rossi's versions is in my opinion the best there is, by far - especially compared to Deguelt's original version which is ridiculous.
