André Jolivet

In 1936 Jolivet co-founded the group La jeune France along with composers Olivier Messiaen, Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur, and Yves Baudrier, who were attempting to re-establish a more human and less abstract form of composition.

Claude Debussy, Paul Dukas, and Maurice Ravel were to be his next influences after he heard a concert of their work in 1919; he composed several piano pieces while training to become a teacher before going to study with Le Flem.

Schoenberg and Varèse were strongly evident in his first period of maturity as a composer, during which his style drew heavily upon atonality and modernistic ideas.

Jolivet's intent as a composer throughout his career was to "give back to music its original, ancient meaning, when it was the magical, incantatory expression of the religious beliefs of human groups."

Finally realizing his youthful ambition to write for the theater, Jolivet became the musical director of the Comédie Française in 1945, a post he held until 1959.

He also continued to compose for the concert hall, often inspired by his frequent travels around the world, adapting texts and music from Egypt, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia into his distinctly French style.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Jolivet wrote several concertos for a variety of instruments including trumpet, piano, flute, harp, bassoon, percussion, cello, and violin.