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The most poetic of the post-war serialists, Barraqué evolved a personal serial technique of proliferating note-rows which he used to engender music of extreme complexity and passion. His entire acknowledged output encompasses seven works:
- Piano Sonata (1952)
- Sequence for soprano and ensemble (1950-54)
- Etude for tape (1954)
- Le temps restitue for soprano, chorus and orchestra (1956-57, rev. 1968)
- ... au dela de la hasard for voices and four instrumental groups (1959)
- Chant apres chant for soprano, piano and percussion (1966)
- Concerto for clarinet, vibraphone and six trios (1968)
The last four of these (even the Concerto) are part of, or commentaries upon, or commentaries upon those commentaries, of one part of the projected gesamtkunstwerk ‘La Morte de Virgile’. There are or were some small fragments of other projected members of the cycle: Discours for voices and orchestra (1961); Lysanias (1966-73); Portiques du Feu (partly destroyed in fire, 1968; fragment 1972); L’Homme couche (stage work, 1969), Hymnes a Plotia (string quartet, 1969); Arrache de ... commentaire en forme de lecture du Temps Restitue (voices and instruments, 1970).
Preceding his acknowledged works Barraqué wrote about 30 others, which perhaps still exist. They included Nocturne in C sharp minor for piano (1943), Symphony (ca. 1945), Mouvement Lent, piano (1947), Sonata for solo violin (ca. 1948), Symphony in C sharp minor (ca. 1949) three piano sonatas, and finally three Songs for voice and piano (1950, words by Baudelaire, Rimbaud and from the Song of Songs) - these songs, now with texts by Nietzsche, became the basis of the published Sequence.
Life
Student of Jean Langlais at the Paris Conservatoire, he was in Messiaen’s analysis class 1948-51 (where he met Andre Hodeir, Boulez and Goeyvaerts), then worked in the Group de Recherche de Musique Concrete and for the Club d’Essai of French Radio. Afterwards taught privately. He wrote some music criticism, contributed important articles to Larousse de la Musique, and wrote especially an interesting book on Debussy. Yvonne Loriod premiered Barraqué‘s Piano Sonata and Boulez conducted some of his larger works at the Concerts du Domaine Musicale. In 1955 Michel Foucault introduced him to Hermann Broch’s novel The Death of Virgil, which he decided to take as the basis for a vast musical cycle which would occupy his entire creative life. Only a small portion of it was realized. In 1961 Hodeir’s book ‘Since Debussy’ proclaimed Barraqué, at least by implication, as one of the greatest composers since Beethoven, mainly on the basis of the Piano Sonata, attracting international attention although his number of works (and the number of their performances) remained tiny. Stylistically and socially he remained a loner. After a car accident in 1964 he was dogged by ill-health and underwent several operations as well as a fire at his home which destroyed some of his manuscripts. In 1971 applied to be professor of analysis at the Paris Conservatoire but was turned down. In 1972, forced by the courts to pay 3000 francs damages to the estate of Erik Satie for a passage about Satie and Debussy in his Debussy book. Chevalier of the Ordre National du Merite, June 1973; six weeks later Barraqué died aged 45.