The Greek composer Vangelis, who has died aged 79, always avoided becoming a trained, academic musician, and had an almost superstitious fear of analysing the nature of his gifts. “I don’t know how it happens,” he said. “I don’t try to know. It’s like riding a bicycle. If you think, ‘How am I going to do it?’ you fall down.”
However he did it, he created a string of enduring and hugely varied works, ranging from pop and semi-classical compositions using a mixture of synthesisers, electronica and traditional instrumentation to some of the most memorable film scores in cinematic history. He became a pop star in his native Greece in the late 1960s with Aphrodite’s Child, zooming up European charts with their single Rain and Tears and playing to stadium-sized crowds, and formed a successful partnership with Jon Anderson, the vocalist with Yes. His solo albums covered countless musical bases, from classical and jazz to electronic and ambient.
