won the Prix de Rome in 1934 for his work La Légende de Roukmani, a one-act cantata. As part of the prize, he lived in Rome at the Villa de Medici for the following four years and five months so he could focus on growing as a composer, developing a voice, and honing his art. In Rome, Bozza composed several large-scale works such as his opera Leonidas, his Psalms, and the Introduzione and Toccata for piano and orchestra. He then returned to Paris after being appointed to conduct the Opéra-Comique from 1938 to 1948. Academic career and later life (1950–1991) In 1950,, he was appointed the director of the École Nationale de Musique in Valenciennes and maintained the position until his retirement in 1975. The years spent at the École Nationale were extremely productive for Bozza. He composed many of his books of études and solo works during this time for students and staff at his school. Additionally, he was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur in 1956. He divorced Juliette Arnaud in the early 1950s. Also during this time he met his second wife, a pianist named Nelly Baude, and they had a daughter, Cécile, who went on to study at the Paris Conservatory and become a harp teacher in Denain. After retirement in 1975, Bozza stayed in Valenciennes and continued to write music. He fell ill late in life and died in Valenciennes aged 86. Compositions See List of compositions by Eugène Bozza Bozza was a prolific composer throughout his life. Beginning in the mid-1930s, he published at least one new work each year until just a few years before his death. Though a trained violinist, Bozza wrote an enormous amount of music for wind instruments during his life. Most of his wind music was composed and published during his time in Valenciennes. There are over 250 known published works as well as a wealth of manuscripts. During a posthumous assessment of the archives of Bozza's music over 70 unpublished manuscripts were found as well as several dozen that are no longer in print. During his studies music in the inter-war period, the musical styles in Paris were moving away from Romanticism and Impressionism and towards the ideas of wit and eclecticism as laid out in Jean Cocteau's 1918 manifesto Le Coq et l’Arlequin. Cocteau said, "We have had enough clouds, waves, aquaria, watersprites, and nocturnal perfumes".