Jean Barraque French composer and musicologist Date of Birth: 17.01.1928 Country: France

Biography of Jean Barraqué

Jean Barraqué was a French composer and musicologist who experimented with electronic music and continued to develop techniques such as serialism, resulting in the creation of small but highly complex and passionate works. He was born on January 17, 1928, in Puteaux, a small town in the Hauts-de-Seine department near Paris. In 1931, his family moved to Paris. During his early youth, which coincided with the years of World War II, Jean Barraqué sang in the choir of Notre Dame Cathedral and took piano lessons. One day, in the early 1940s, he heard Franz Schubert's unfinished Eighth Symphony, which sparked a strong desire in him to become a composer.

Barraqué studied in Paris with Jean Langlais, learning harmony and counterpoint, and from 1948 to 1951 with Olivier Messiaen. It was through Messiaen that he became interested in serialism. After completing his Piano Sonata in 1952, Barraqué removed and possibly destroyed all his earlier works, claiming to have composed around 30 pieces before the Sonata but later destroyed them.

The book "Since Debussy" by French music critic André Hodeir sparked controversy around Barraqué's work, as it claimed that his Sonata was possibly the best piano sonata since Beethoven. Since the Sonata had not yet been performed in public (only two of his works had been performed by that time), Hodeir's extravagant claim was met with skepticism. However, it later became clear that Hodeir had perceived with remarkable accuracy the exceptional qualities inherent in Barraqué's music, characterized by its intense romantic richness that set it apart from the works of Boulez and Stockhausen of the same period. According to Paul Griffiths' recently published biography, Boulez had been trying to obtain Barraqué's piano sonata for performance for several years after it was completed.

Barraqué's music was published from 1963 onwards by Florentine entrepreneur Aldo Bruzichelli, who provided much-needed financial support to the struggling composer. However, Bruzichelli couldn't compete with the Viennese publishing house "Universal Edition," which published the works of Boulez, Berio, and Stockhausen. Consequently, Barraqué remained relatively unknown for a long time and, much later than his contemporary composers, had the opportunity to participate in music festivals and concerts.

From 1951 to 1954, Barraqué was involved in the activities of Pierre Schaeffer's Groupe de recherches musicales at the RTF electronic music studio. In 1952, he met philosopher Michel Foucault, and they became friends, eventually engaging in a passionate romance that ended in 1956. In 1964, Barraqué was involved in a car accident, and four years later, in November 1968, his apartment was destroyed by fire.

He suffered from poor health for much of his life. Nevertheless, his death – Barraqué passed away in Paris on August 17, 1973, at the age of 45 – was sudden and unexpected. By that time, he had reportedly resumed work on several major compositions from the monumental cycle "La Mort de Virgile" ("The Death of Virgil") based on the book by Austrian writer Hermann Broch, which was introduced to him by his friend and lover. Unfortunately, only a few fragments of this complex work survived, as the others disappeared with the composer's death.

Barraqué wrote numerous articles about other composers, including his admired Alban Berg, Monteverdi, Mozart, and Messiaen, as well as on theoretical aspects of contemporary music. His main work in this field remains the book on Claude Debussy, published in Paris in 1962. He also left behind numerous analyses of works from the standard repertoire, from J.S. Bach to Honegger, some of which he used in his teaching. Among his few students was British composer Bill Hopkins.