Les Granges Brulees

Les Granges Brûlées is a rural thriller starring Simone Signoret and Alain Delon, set in the snow of the Jura. Jean Chapot gave the score to a young composer fresh out of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, and then left him alone to write it — understanding straight away that the distance between a hyper-classical French drama and an electronic score was the point, not a problem.

Jarre had almost nothing to work with: a VCS3 synthesiser, a Farfisa organ and three synchronised Revox tape machines. What he produced with them is probably one of the first electronic film scores ever made.

The music is built from a handful of melodic leitmotifs that recur across the film in different treatments, moving from mournful to something close to sublime. The principal statement of the theme, "La Chanson des Granges Brûlées", plays at the end as Delon walks away into the snow. Elsewhere the score turns strange — "Une morte dans la neige" sits close to musique concrète, "Zig-Zag" like a carousel coming apart.

What holds it together is an ambition Jarre would spend the next decade on: bridging experimental music and pop.

Released in 1973. Reissued on CD by Disques Dreyfus in 2003, and on vinyl by Transversales in 2023, remastered from the original tapes with "Happiness Is a Sad Song", composed during his GRM years, as a bonus track.