Jean-Henri-Alphonse Barraqué (17 January 1928 – 17 August 1973) was a French composer and writer on music who developed an individual form of serialism which is displayed in a small output.
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Jean-Henri-Alphonse Barraqué (17 January 1928 – 17 August 1973) was a French composer and writer on music who developed an individual form of serialism which is displayed in a small output.
Jean-Henri-Alphonse Barraquéwas born in Puteaux, Hauts-de-Seine. In 1931, he moved with his family to Paris. He studied in Paris with Jean Langlais and Olivier Messiaen and, through Messiaen, became interested in serialism. After completing his Piano Sonata in 1952, he suppressed or destroyed his earlier works. A book published by the French music critic André Hodeir, titled Since Debussy,[1] created controversy around Barraqué by claiming this work as perhaps the finest piano sonata since Beethoven. As the work had still not been publicly performed, and only two other works by him had at this time, the extravagant claims made for Barraqué in this book were received with some scepticism. Whilst with hindsight it is clear that Hodeir had accurately perceived the exceptional features of Barraqué's music—notably its searing Romantic intensity, which distinguishes it from the contemporaneous works of Boulez or Stockhausen. As Paul Griffiths' biography clarified, Boulez had in fact attempted to get the Barraqué Piano Sonata performed for some years after it was finished.[2] Barraqué's music was published starting in 1963 by the Florentine businessman Aldo Bruzzichelli,[3] who provided much-needed material assistance for the composer, but whose promotion could not perhaps compete with that of the better known Universal Edition in Vienna who published Boulez, Berio, and Stockhausen. In any event, Barraqué did not obtain ready access to the better-known new music festivals and concert series until much later than they.
Embracing the Parisian avant-garde, Barraqué entered into a romantic relationship with the philosopher Michel Foucault. Together, they tried to produce their greatest work, used recreational drugs heavily and engaged in sado-masochistic sexual activity.[4][5][6] They met in 1952; they are first friends, then live a stormy love story, which Jean Barraqué ended in 1956.
Barraqué was involved in a car accident in 1964, and his apartment was destroyed by fire in November 1968.[7] He suffered from bad health for much of his life. Nevertheless, his death in Paris in August 1973, at the age of 45, was sudden and unexpected, and he appeared to have resumed serious work on a number of larger compositions from the Death of Virgil cycle.[8]
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