Film lovers have often seen the name and heard the music of Michel Legrand (1932-2019) as the credits rolled. During a career that began in the late ‘40s and ended only a year before his death, Legrand contributed music to some 200 films, many of them French, but with a Hollywood tangent that included The Thomas Crown Affair and Yentl .

French film historian Stephane Lerouge sat with Legrand for many sessions and helped him compose a memoir, A Life in Music and Film . According to Lerouge, Legrand was a reluctant memoirist and laid down many conditions for this collaboration. He didn’t want a linear autobiography stuffed with the chaff of everyday life but a set of reflections on certain memories, certain times. “Michel spoke the book, I wrote it; the content is his, the form mine,”

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