Vangelis, Oscar-winning composer of 'Chariots of Fire' score, dies at 79

Vangelis, the Greek composer whose rousing electronic theme music for the Oscar-winning 1981 film Chariots of Fire became one of the most loved movie scores, has died at the age of 79.

The Athens News Agency quoted an announcement from his lawyers’ office as saying the composer died late on Tuesday, without giving a cause of death.

In a post on Twitter, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called Vangelis “a pioneer of the electronic sound.”

“He began his long journey on the Chariots of Fire Mitsotakis wrote. “From there he will always send us his notes.”

Born Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou in 1943, the young Vangelis developed an early interest in music and experiments with sounds produced by banging pots and pans or fixing nails, glasses and other objects to the strings of his parents’ piano.

He absorbed the tones of Greek folk songs and Orthodox Christian choral music, but he had no formal musical training, which he later said had helped save his sense of creativity.

After a start with local rock bands, Vangelis left for Paris at the age of 25, joining an exodus of young artists following a 1967 coup that installed a military junta in Greece.

Away from home, he was attracted by the then-new field of electronic synthesizers that allowed him to create the lush melodic colours that became his trademark sound.

Despite enjoying success in the European “prog rock” scene of the early 1970s with Aphrodite’s Child, a band he formed with fellow Greek musician Demis Roussos, Vangelis was uncomfortable with the expectations on a commercial performing artist and largely retreated to the recording studio he created for himself in London.

But he remained wary of commercial success, once telling an interviewer he never saw music as just an entertainment.