Olivier Greif was a French composer and pianist. He began playing the piano at three and composing at nine. He studied at the Paris Conservatory with Lucette Descaves in piano, Tony Aubin in composition, and Jean Hubeau in chamber music. From 1969, he studied at the Juilliard School with Luciano Berio and later assisted Berio with a production of his opera at the Santa Fe Opera. Greif returned to the Paris Conservatory in 1971 to study orchestration and arranging. Around this time, he collaborated with pianist Katia Labèque, for whom he wrote a cycle of piano miniatures.
Greif composed many chamber works, particularly for piano, during the 1960s and 1970s. His chamber opera Nô, with a libretto by Marc Sholodенко, received its concert premiere in 1981. After a cool reception from colleagues and critics, he largely stopped composing for nearly a decade and focused mainly on promoting Sri Chinmoy’s teachings in France. He returned to active musical work with a recording of Florent Schmitt’s Piano Quartet alongside Régis and Bruno Pasquier and Roland Pidoux; the recording received a French recording award in 1992.
Among Greif’s later works are the vocal cycle Letters from Westerbork (1993), using letters by Etty Hillesum and excerpts from psalms, and Symphony No. 1 for voice and orchestra (1997), setting poems by Paul Celan. His father, who was of Polish Jewish origin, survived Auschwitz, where he was imprisoned in 1944–45. Greif’s String Quartet No. 3, titled Death Fugue, was also prompted by Celan’s poem, though Greif ultimately set a poem by Dylan Thomas instead. His fourth quartet drew on James Joyce’s Ulysses. His output also includes vocal works setting texts by Li Bai, John Donne, William Blake, Friedrich Hölderlin, Alfred de Musset, Heinrich Heine, Jacques Prévert, and Paul Bowles, as well as 23 piano sonatas. His best-known works include the Sonata-Requiem for cello and piano (1979). Greif received awards from the Institute of France and other organizations as a composer and pianist. He died suddenly in 2000 and was buried in Montparnasse Cemetery.