Georges Delerue

In the centenary year of his birth, Quartet Records unveils for the first time the complete score that Georges Delerue composed for Fred Zinnemann's masterful 1973 thriller The Day of the Jackal - a work largely unheard until now, buried beneath the weight of editorial decisions that stripped the film's second half of any musical accompaniment.

Based on Frederick Forsyth's bestselling novel, the film follows a professional assassin hired by disgruntled military veterans to eliminate President Charles de Gaulle in the aftermath of Algerian independence. Edward Fox delivers an icily charismatic performance in the title role, supported by Michael Lonsdale, Derek Jacobi, Alan Badel and Cyril Cusack in a taut, procedural narrative that builds tension through precision rather than spectacle.

Delerue - who had previously collaborated with Zinnemann on A Man for All Seasons (1966) and would reunite with him on Julia (1977) - crafted a score of coiled intensity: fatalistic string writing in his unmistakable voice, touched by the shadow of Bernard Herrmann in its repeating, minimalist suspense figures. Alongside the dramatic underscore, the composer provided source cues spanning pop arrangements, Muzak-styled interludes, accordion-driven street scenes and a waltz - roughly thirty minutes of music, of which barely five survived in the final cut.

This premiere edition, painstakingly restored and mastered by Mike Matessino from surviving elements held by Universal Pictures and the Delerue estate, reconstructs the score as the composer may have intended it. Liner notes by Jeff Bond provide essential context for a release that finally allows this hidden work to be heard in full - a fitting tribute to one of cinema's most lyrical voices, one hundred years after his birth in Roubaix.