Charles Chaynes has been played on NTS in shows including We Are… w/ Paul Camo, featured first on 16 October 2013. Songs played include Pour Le Kama Soutra.

French composer Charles Chaynes was born July 11, 1925 in Toulouse. His parents were professors at the Toulouse Conservatory of Music where his father played and taught violin, and his mother played piano and taught music theory. Chaynes credits his parents for sparking his interest in composing at age fifteen and preparing him for a career as a musician.

Chaynes enrolled in the Paris Conservatory following his studies in Toulouse. At the conservatory he studied harmony with Jean Gallon and composition with Darius Milhaud; he also continued to study the fugue and the violin. Several sources, including the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Baker’s Biographical Dictionary, list Jean Rivier as one of Chaynes’ primary teachers at the conservatory. Chaynes, interestingly, says that he never studied with or even knew Rivier, and that any comparison made between his and Rivier’s music is false. Chaynes credits Béla Bartók, Alban Berg, and Oliver Messiaen as composers also who influenced his style. Chaynes obtained first prizes in harmony, composition, fugue, and violin at the conservatory.

In 1951, Chaynes was awarded the first Grand Prix de Rome for his cantata Et l’homme vit se rouvrir le portes. This afforded Chaynes the opportunity to study in Rome with funding from the French Government; from 1952-1955 he worked at the Académie de France in Rome. Chaynes returned to Paris in 1956 and began working for French radio station L’ ORTF as a producer. The composer remarks that he came to this occupation because of a simple liking for radio and “most of all by chance”. In 1960, Chaynes won the Prince Pierre de Monaco Concours for music and in 1965, the City of Paris’ Grand Prix de Musical. Later that year, he was named controller of the Office de la Radio et de la Télévision Francaise at ORTF, where he began overseeing all French public television and radio on behalf of the government. Chaynes was promoted to Head of Musical Creation at ORTF in 1975. He held that position until his retirement from radio in 1990. Chaynes says that an understanding of the recording process had a keen impact on his compositional style. He also remarks that retirement has allowed him to compose more freely and write larger works (operas). He has composed three operas since retirement: Jocaste, Cécelia, and Mi Amor. Charles Chaynes will always compose, saying that writing is a normal need.