[1] He was considered one of Les Six, a group of artists informally associated with Jean Cocteau and Erik Satie.

[5][6] Having gained recognition as a child prodigy both in composition and piano performance, he became a protégé of Erik Satie during the following decade.

Because of this and his association with Cocteau and Satie, Auric was grouped into Les Six by music critic Henri Collet, and was friends with the artist Jean Hugo.

In 1921, Cocteau asked him to write the music for his ballet, Les Mariés de la tour Eiffel.

It was also in 1927 that he contributed the Rondeau for the children's ballet L'Éventail de Jeanne, a collaboration between ten French composers.

[8] Auric's later development as a populist composer was prefigured by many of the techniques and ideals of Les Six, especially the use of popular music and situations.

His Piano Sonata (1931) was poorly received and was followed by a period of five years in which he wrote very little, including his first three film scores.

However, he abandoned the elitist and highly referential attitudes of his earlier years by 1935 in favour of a populist approach.

[13] In 1962, he gave up writing for motion pictures when he became director of the Opéra National de Paris and then chairman of SACEM, the French Performing Rights Society.

Specifically, his criticism focused on the perceived pretentiousness of Debussy, Wagner, Saint-Saëns, and Massenet, as well as the music of those who followed their styles.