ATHENS, Greece—Vangelis, the Greek electronic composer who wrote the Academy Award-winning score for the film “Chariots of Fire” and music for dozens of other movies, documentaries, and TV series, has died at 79.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and other government officials expressed their condolences Thursday. Greek media reported that Vangelis—born Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou—died in a French hospital late Tuesday.
“Vangelis Papathanassiou is no longer among us,” Mitsotakis wrote on Twitter, calling Vangelis’s death “sad news for the entire world.”
Born on March 29, 1943, near the city of Volos in central Greece, Vangelis started playing the piano at age 4, although he got no formal training and claimed he never learned to read notes.
“Orchestration, composition—they teach these things in music schools, but there are some things you can never teach,” he said in a 1982 interview. “You can’t teach creation.”
His huge breakthrough came with the score for “Chariots of Fire” that told the true story of two British runners competing in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris. Vangelis’ score won one of the four Academy Awards the film captured, including best picture. The signature piece is one of the hardest-to-forget movie tunes worldwide—and has also served as the musical background to endless slow-motion parodies.
Vangelis later wrote music scores for Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” (1982) and “1492: Conquest of Paradise” (1992), as well as for “Missing” (1982) and “Antarctica” (1983), among others.
He refused many other offers for film scores, saying in an interview: “Half of the films I see don’t need music. It sounds like something stuffed in.”
Vangelis was wary of how record companies handled commercial success. With success, he said, “you find yourself stuck and obliged to repeat yourself and your previous success.”
His interest in science—including the physics of music and sound—and space exploration led to compositions linked with major NASA and European Space Agency projects. When British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking died in 2018, Vangelis composed a musical tribute for his interment that the ESA broadcast into space.
He avoided the lifestyle excesses associated with many in the music industry, saying that he never took drugs—“which was very uncomfortable, at times.”
Vangelis said he didn’t ever experiment with his music and usually did everything on the first take.
“When I compose, I perform the music at the same time, so everything is live, nothing is pre-programmed,” he said.
Decca, the record label for his last three albums, called the composer “a genius.”
“Vangelis created music of extraordinary originality and power, and provided the soundtrack to so many of our lives,” it said. “Decca had the pleasure of partnering with Vangelis and his team for his past three albums and we will miss him enormously. His music will live on forever.”
The composer lived in London, Paris, and Athens, where he bought a house at the foot of the Acropolis that he never dolled up, even when his street became one of the most desirable pedestrian walks in town. The neoclassical building was nearly demolished in 2007 when government officials decided that it spoilt the view of the ancient citadel from a new museum built next door, but eventually reconsidered.
Vangelis received many awards in Greece, France and the United States. Little was known of his personal life besides that he was an avid painter.
“Every day I paint and every day I compose music,” he said—in that order.
