Henri Tomasi (1901–1971) was born in Marseille, France, on 17 August 1901. At the age of seven, Tomasi entered the Conservatoire de Musique de Marseille. In 1921, he started his studies at the Conservatoire de Paris, where his teachers included Vincent d’Indy, Georges Caussade, and Paul Vidal. In 1927, he won the second Grand Prix de Rome for his cantata, Coriolan, and a First Prize for Orchestral Conducting, which were both awarded unanimously. From 1930 to 1935, Tomasi served as the music director of the Radio Colonial Orchestra in French Indochina. During the 1930s he was one of the founders of a contemporary music group in Paris entitled Triton along with Prokofiev, Milhaud, Honegger, and Poulenc.
As a composer, his orchestral music is important, but above all, he was attracted to the theater. In the realm of instrumental music, he preferred composing for wind instruments. He composed concerti for flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, bassoon, trumpet, horn, and trombone. He also composed concerti for violin and viola. In 1946, Tomasi assumed the post of conductor of the Opera de Monte Carlo. He became extremely sought-after as a guest conductor all over Europe. In 1948, he wrote what would become his most popular composition, the Concerto for Trumpet. In 1957, Tomasi stopped conducting because of physical problems, including advancing deafness in his right ear. His last piece for the theater, In Praise of Madness (the nuclear era), is a cross between opera and ballet and reflects Tomasi’s post-war disillusionment with mankind. During his last period of composition, he was motivated by political events and wrote pieces such as the Third World Symphony and Chant pour le Vietnam. As his health deteriorated, he began working on an operatic version of Hamlet. On 13 January 1971, he died peacefully in his apartment in Montmartre, Paris.