A Biographical Chronology of Jean Barraqu Author(s): Rose-Marie Janzen and Adrian Jack Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol.

27, No. 1, (Winter, 1989), pp. 234-245 Published by: Perspectives of New Music Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/833269 Accessed: 11/08/2008 06:26
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A BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONOLOGY OF JEAN BARRAQUE

ROSE-MARE JANZEN
in Since Debussy, a survey worldbya laudatory of contemchapter speaking porarymusic by Andre Hodeir,publishedin the United Statesand England in and Warburg). Theterms Grove Secker 1961(NewYork: Press,Inc., and London: made manysceptical in which Barraque'smusic was described of the composer's hissmalloutput importance, yet bythe time he diedin 1973 at the ageofforty-five, all whichhe recognised, attention.He leftonlysix works wasattractingincreasing to a hugeproject inspired bythephilosophof themon a largescale.Threebelonged ical novelThe Death of Virgil byHermannBroch.Death wasa centralconcern that his ownLa Mort de Virgile wouldnever be to the composer, and he recognised A which he his serial evolved own complete. pupil of Messiaen,Barraque technique Thecharacter in poetic put tofundamentally of his musicis welldescribed purposes. He chant. a a letter he wrote rehearsal an extractbelow ofChant apres after from COMPOSER Jean Barraque was introducedto the EnglishTHE FRENCH

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wasbitterly toavant-garde extremes suchas aleatoricism, whichhe thought opposed rootless and irresponsible. He revered Beethoven and Schubert,and he was not ashamedto say that the Romantic periodwas hisfavourite. But despitethe deep won in France musicians andabroad, and the loyalty respect from leading Barraque with which he inspired his students,he remainsan isolated figure and eachperevent.Whichis no lessthan he formanceof his musichas the character of a special intended. -Adrian Jack

The following chronology includes only properlyverified facts and dates, enhanced by verbatim quotations from Jean Barraque(letters, articles, and interviews published in his lifetime), their style often more spoken than written. There are inevitablyimportant gaps as well as a certain imbalance, for lack of precise information on some periods of his life. 1873, 5 June. Louis Millet, Jean Barraque'smaternalgrandfather,born in of Cher). (Died 26 January1945.) Bue, near Sancerre(departement 1877, 28 January. Cecile Gresle, JB's maternal grandmother, born in Paris. (Died 20 June 1954.) 1898, 9 July. Grat Barraque,JB's father, third or fourth of ten children, born in Esquiule, near Geronce (in the Basque departement of Pyrenees9 Atlantiques). (Died June 1975.) 1903, 9 January. Germaine Millet, JB's mother, the younger of two sisters, born in Paris. (Died 25 December 1987.) 1923, 9 July. Grat Barraque and Germaine Millet married in Puteaux of Hauts-de-Seine). (dipartement 1928, 17 January. Jean-Henri-Alphonse Barraque born in a clinic in Puteaux, where his maternalgrandparentslived. Baptism at the collegiate church of Montmorency (Val-d'Oise), where his parents lived. He was an only child. Circa 1931. The Barraquefamily settled in Paris, rue du Rocher. Circa 1932. Grat Barraquebought business premises at 1, rue Jacquard, with lodgings attached. JB lived there until 1950. Since both parents worked, he was often left in the chargeof their maid FrancineLe Faucheur, a native of Trelevern in Brittany (Cotes-du-Nord), where he stayed frequently.

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... Unfortunately I am not a Breton, I am a Breton by adoption. My whole life, my whole artisticlife, is in Brittany. I was fascinatedby the sea, by the rocks, by the tides, by a rhythm of life. Doubtless that is where I became a composer, wanting to make something anew just as the tide makes things anew, I wanted to make the UnfinishedSymphony anew, it was there that I dreamed of La Mort de Virgile,albeit for later, so ... everything originated there ... I was five years old, five or six, when I firstgot to know Brittany. ("Propos impromptu," pubMusical de France lished by Raymond Lyon in Le Courrier 26, [Second quarter, 1969]:76) 1939. At the beginning of the war, Grat Barraquewas called up at Talence (Gironde). JB remained in Brittany, where he was on holiday. 1940. JB sat for his certificate of primary studies at Lannion (Cotes-duNord). 1940. During the evacuation of northern France, the Barraque family stayed for a period in the Basque region, and then returned to Paris about September. 1940, October. JB entered the Choir school of Notre-Dame, then part of the Ecole Diocesaine de Paris, rue Massillon. The school provided education in the sixth to fourth classes. The pupils had to take part in the services at Notre-Dame on Sundays and feast-days, either as choristers or servers. (At the end of the fourth class, pupils who wanted to study for the priesthood went on to the Petit-Seminaireof the Diocese of Parisat Charenton.) Subjects taught: Singing, French, Latin, Greek, German, Mathematics, History, Geography, Science, Religion. JB's academic marks were excellent. ... I didn't think of becoming a musician at all, I was in a religious school, and then one Saturday evening-I will always remember, I was, what? twelve yearsold-a teachertook us to his room and put on a record, and it was the UnfinishedSymphony. Previously I had had very superficialcontact with music; I came from a middle-classfamily, I had learntthe piano and the violin; at the Notre-Dame Choir School where I started my studies they did nearly three-quarters of an hour singing each day. But I didn't knowmusic. And then, suddenly, that Saturday, with some of my school-fellows, I was made to listen to the Unfinished Symphony! I didn't know what it was. Brutally, from that moment on, I was like a madman, obsessed ... ("Propos impromptu," p. 75)

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1943, 13 July. JB completed a Nocturnein C-sharp minor for piano solo and dedicated it to a cousin. 1943, Autumn. JB entered the Lycee Condorcet where he went through the third, second, and first classesand Philosophy, staying until 1947. The same subjects were taught up to Philosophy as at the Ecole Diocesaine. Academic marks:fairlyaverage.According to his schoolfellows, JB was neither very hard-workingnor very ambitious in his studies, but above all passionate about music. He talked of wanting to become a priest. 1945-47. Early composing: for piano, for voice and piano, for violin and piano, for solo horn; a Sonata, a Symphony. JB took piano lessons without working very hard; what he liked was to improvise at the piano for hours on end. Circa 1947. JB studied harmony, counterpoint, and fugue with Jean Langlais. Piano lessons with a teacherwho followed the method of MarieJaell. My Mouvement lent will be given its first performance by Denyse Tolkowsky-de Vries at INR, Brussels [Belgian Radio] ... on Saturday 26 June. It's a piano piece written last June ... I don't think you will like it and that you'll feel bewildered. Don't draw away! Get yourself in a mood of absolute silence (have you ever listened to the silence of nature). Don't tell yourself it's difficult, that you don't understand music, etc. Let your soul and your heart listen free of everything that fills your life, needs, affections, loves, sadness, emotions, etc. Only then will you reach that thing of movement which is music... (Letter, 12 May 1948)1 1948. JB tried his hand at music criticism (for Liberation).Compositions: for voice and piano, for voice and organ, Third Sonata for piano. Autumn 1948. JB attended Messiaen's course in analysisas a free student [auditeur]. He continued for about three years and met, among others, Edvard Bull, Marcel Bedot, Jean Bonfils, Adrienne Clostre, Pierre Cochereau, Marius Constant, Christiane Delisle, Michel Fano, Karel Goeyvaerts, Sylvio Lacharite, Serge Lancen, Marc Wilkinson .... ... When I first went to Messiaen's class, I had some knowledge of musical thought and its history; I had worked a lot on my own while I was studying counterpoint and fugue .... In that class I acquired knowledge, but above all something indefinable and precious, something which a young musician needs, a sort of love of music .... ("Propos impromptu," p. 77)

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1948-50. Compositions: songs, a cappella chorus, sonata for solo violin, Symphony in C-sharp minor. Circa 1950. JB took Maurice Martenot's course in Ondes. 1950. 1 March:JB completed the song "Je dors et mon coeur veille" (Song of Songs 5:2); 4 April: song "L'Etranger" (Baudelaire,"Petits poemes en prose"); June to September: song "L'Epoux infernal" (Rimbaud, "Delires I"). These three songs, reworked and instrumented, with interfor voice, percussion, and ludes and texts from Nietzsche, became Sequence instrumental ensemble (1955). When I left Messiaen, Siquencewas already composed. It wasn't my first work. There had alreadybeen some thirty before it. I never comis but all the same, for me, Sequence posed so much as before Sequence, a bit of rest little the count as all first work, tryeverything, essays; my ing to get close to it, hovering round it ... ("Propos impromptu," p. 77) 1950, Summer. JB moved to 2, rue de l'Abbe Patureau, on Montmartre. 1951-54. JB took part in a course at the Groupe de Recherches pour la Musique Concrete, together with Pierre Boulez, Yvette Grimaud, Andre Hodeir, and Michel Philippot. He made his Etudefor tape there. 1950s. JB earned his living by doing variouskinds of work. He went on lecture tours for Jeunesses Musicalesde France. During the years1951-53, he worked for the Club d'Essai of French Radio on a monthly broadcast, a radio magazine called "Jeune Musique," of which Andre Hodeir was the editor-in-chief. In 1953 he started to work for Le Guide du Concert, for which he wrote a "Guide de l'Analyse musicale" and numerous pieces of musical analysis. He gave private courses, and from 1956 to 1960 he ran a group course in musical analysis, which was attended by Christian Bellest, Christian Chevalier, Jean-Pierre Drouet, Roger Guerin, Andre Riotte, Henri Rossotti, Hubert Rostaing, Nat Peck, Mme. Candiani, and RoseMarie Janzen, among others. He wrote the analysesin the first volume of de la Musique, published under the direction of Norbert Dufourcq Larousse in 1957. Like other musiciansof his generation, he wrote articlesfor various periodicalsand magazines, notably "Resonances privilegiees, leur justificaRenaud-Barrault tion" (Cahiersde la Compagnie [1953]: 27); "Des gouts et des couleurs" (DomaineMusical [1954]: 14); "Rythme et developpement" [1954]: 47). (Polyphonie ... We reach a stage of human sensitivity where we know (for the "I" can no longer exist, we become historically aware of the state things

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are in) that the history of God has only been the history of oblivion, of the cowardlinessof man. Without a god, there is no meaning to life, and we go around proclaiming that everything is absurd. But what man can consistently accept that his acts are without any meaning?... Are we not, in the end, men of the greatestfaith?The great mystics of our day?And if I say yes, I know that we haven't made one single step forward.... Creation, in its aesthetic necessity, remainsincomprehensible, for one knows very well that it is not enough to make series or fortes and pianos to make a work valid, but the moment "it bursts forth" you enter a world that is so senseless that a rock can turn into a man, and a man can leave reason behind involuntarily, enter into the irrationaland go mad .... (Letter, November 1952) ... Having emerged from the nightmare and amphigory of my childhood and adolescence, I embarkedon and pursue the life of freedom and independence that I have chosen-as much on the intellectual as on the moral and social plane. (Letter, 15 September 1954) ... You certainly realise that my deep atheism (won with as much courage and tenacity as my musical world) has nothing superficial about it .... My artisticevolution, my creativityas it is now-after so much suffering, frenzy, frustration, and disaster-may be fulfilled in the isolated abundance of rigorous without compromise, withdespair out redemption, and without happiness (but without hell) only through the attainment of that atheism. (Letter, 6 July 1959) 1952. The year given by JB as that in which he completed the Sonata for piano. The manuscriptis not dated. It seems that JB made more than one copy to send to interested pianists. Yvonne Loriod played a fragment of it of about five minutes during a broadcast, "Tribune des jeunes compositeurs." Some performances and even recordings were planned, by Marcelle Mercenier, Paul Jacobs, David Tudor, but they did not materialise. The Sonata finally became known through the recording Yvonne Loriod made for Vega records (see below). 1955. Michel Foucault introduced JB to TheDeath of Virgil,the philosophical novel by the Austrian Hermann Broch. at the Theatre du Petit1956, 10-11 March. First performanceof Sequence a with Ethel at Domaine Musical concert, Semser, soprano, and Marigny, Rudolf Albert conducting. The work was recorded live and issued shortly afterwards on a ten-inch disc under the Vega imprint; in 1958 it was reissuedby Vega on a twelve-inch disc (C30 A180) coupled with the Sonata recorded by Yvonne Loriod.

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1956, Saturday, 24 March. On two facing pages of a notebook, JB drew up and dated an outline of La Mort de Virgile,a huge composition to which he expected to devote the rest of his life. 1957, 20 October. JB completed a first version of Le Tempsrestitue(La Mort de Virgile), a seventy-four-page manuscript score signed and dated March 1956-Paris 20 October 1957. The cover is dated 11December 1957. 1957-59. Work on two projects of "dramatic composition" in collaboration with Jean Thibaudeau and JacquesPolieri. The projects did not materialise;some of the music was later used in... au-deladu hasard. 1959, 22 December. JB completed and signed the manuscript of... audelkdu hasard(La Mort de Virgile).He later dedicated the work to Andre Hodeir, 12 June 1961. 1960, 26 January. First performanceat the Concerts du Domaine Musical of... au-deladu hasard,for four instrumentalgroups and one vocal group, by Yvonne Loriod, Ethel Semser, Marie-Therese Cahn, Simone Codinas, Hubert Rostaing, the Jazz Groupe de Paris (musical director Andre Hodeir) and the Ensemble du Domaine Musical, conductor PierreBoulez. ... au-deladu hasardis a kind of multidimensionalmusicalvision. Several movements are interrelated, appearing, reappearing,and vanishing, embodying the idea of strangeness and heterogeneity. The perpetual variation has to do with the notion of "musical oblivion." All parameters... pitches, durations, register, timbre, set up a complete contradictionwith the orchestration.The jazz group is conceived here as one block of sound among others, as a harmonicagglomeration.(JB duJazz 4 [1961]:70) interviewed by Lucien Malson, LesCahiers 1960, Autumn. On the initiative of Gunther Schuller, JB met Aldo Bruzzichelli, a Florentine businessman and former theatre producer and director, who had just started a music publishingbusiness and subsequently published all of Barraque'swork. 1961, 1 January. JB became a researchfellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He was appointed researchassistanton 1 October 1962 (philosophy section, Etienne Souriau, director), a position he held until 30 September 1970. 1961, 21 June. Date on the first page of Discours(La Mort de Virgile), an incomplete manuscript of nine pages (soprano, contralto, five tenors, four basses, solo piano, and orchestra). 1962, 23 April. JB began composing the Concerto, Easter Monday.

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... I received a letter from Boulez asking for a new work for the next season of the Domaine Musical, something within their performance possibilities. I wrote back suggesting the Concerto. (Letter from JB to his publisher, 19 December 1962) 1962, October. Editions du Seuil published Barraque's book Debussy (afterwardstranslatedinto German, Japanese,Swedish, and Spanish). 1963, September. Aldo Bruzzichelli published Sequence. 1964, 18 January. JB had a car accident and was taken to the AmbroisePare hospital at Neuilly. was composed in a few weeks, 1966. Chantapreschant (La Mort de Virgile) with a view to first performance at the Strasbourg Festival. The undated manuscript was completed at the end of April. (It was dedicated to Maria and Michel Bernstein, 20 August 1970.) The published score (1968) was dedicated to Madame Edouard Blivet, known as "Riri," daughterof Francine Le Faucheur. [After a partial rehearsal] ... So I have heard C.a.C. for the first time .... For the first time I am happy .... The score that I dreamed, austere, tough, violent, sumptuous .... In short, the work I owed to the Sea, to my country. The voice part... gripping [etreignante].A work that is [illegible], strict, pure, tumultuous, economical in utterance .... (Letter, 24 May 1966) 1966, May. Aldo Bruzzichelli published the Sonata. 1966, 23 June. First performance of Chant apres chant at Strasbourg: Berthe Kal, soprano; Andre Krust, piano; Percussionsde Strasbourg,conducted by CharlesBruck. 1966, July. JB began the composition of Lysanias(La Mort de Virgile)at Malesherbes. The first performancewas planned for November, 1966. JB fell ill during the summer and was unable to finish the work. He worked on it again, particularlyin 1973, a short while before his death, but did not finish it. 1967, 24 April. The Danish pianist Elizabeth Klein played the Sonata at a concert in Copenhagen, unawarethat it was the first public performanceof the work, previously known only from the record and the score. du hasard. 1967, fourth quarter. Aldo Bruzzichelli published... au-delA in restitue 1968, 8 February. JB completed the final manuscriptof Le Temps Florence.

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at the Royan Festival: restitue 1968, 4 April. First performanceof Le Temps Helga Pilarczyk, soprano; soloists of the French Radio Choir (directed by Jean-PaulKreder); Ensemble du Domaine Musical, conducted by Gilbert Amy. The first Parisperformancewas at a Domaine Musical concert on 25 April. 1968, 5 August. Chant apres chant was performed in Avignon with Josephine Nendick, soprano; Christian Ivaldi, piano; Percussions de Strasbourg,conducted by CharlesBruck. 1968, Summer-Autumn. JB worked on the Concerto in Perros-Guirec and completed it in Florence in late October. ... Concerto, more than urgent. The orchestral material must be finished by the end of October. I don't know how I can do it. But I will finish it. A strange work-perhaps the only one I have dreamed about-outside myself, on the fringe of amusement, of laughter, playing in dramaand sadness. A sumptuous virtuosity which comes, goes, plunges, oblivious of surrounding landscape ... like a kite. Yes, something like that .... (Letter, 7 September 1968) 1968, 20 November. First performance in London of the Concerto: Hubert Rostaing, Tristan Fry, BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Gilbert Amy. The manuscriptwas dedicated 20 March1969 to Claude and Hubert Rostaing. 1968, late November. Fire in the building at rue Patureauafter an explosion caused by a gas leak. For severalmonths JB stayed with friends or in a hotel. ... In the course of my moves I LOST all the dossier and half the written score of Portiques du Feu. I cried over it like a madman. You can understand how inadmissibleit is, how dreadfulfor a creatorto lose a piece of eternity forever, to forget it forever. Even if I begin again-and I will-it will never be the same ... (Letter, 7 October 1969) 1969, mid-April. JB moved to 113, rue des Moines. 1969, 12-14 July. Claude Helffer recorded the Sonata in Copenhagen for Valoisrecords (MB 952). JB was present at the recordingsessions. 1969, 6 October. JB, in hospital for a check-up, outlined a project for L'Hommecouche(La Mort de Virgile),a lyric work he did not complete. It seems to have been planned in three acts. JB detailed the literarythemes on severalpages in January1972.

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... As soon as I recover I shall go back to Lysanias, then Hymnesa du Feu, then... a very big project I'd like to talk Plotia, then Portiques to you about, which would be the sum of all my creativethought. It would be a kind of opera on all the myths... (Letter, 7 October 1969) ... What is myth? It's something passed on by word of mouth which everyone recognises. And the great composer today who would create lyric work, it would be a work everyone could identify with-as it was in ancient Greece for example, when the stories of Orestes were told ... and then ... for example, the Mass, or the Passions.... Or are Dachau and Buchenwald a myth? I don't know yet. But what is there that everyone can identify with, what "myth" is there? There is very little. The only real myth is that of Death ... and every artist, every creator, is committed to [estaxe sur] what I would call the "creation" of Death. So there are not many myths: Love, Death, Night-that's all. (JB interviewed by Florence Mothe, 30 April 1969) ... So... here I am in hospital again... still more stripped away, flayed further .... Yes I know, Music waits for me; but before I become a statue I should like also to be a man; almost like others .... The sublime is beautiful, but from a distance .... I am sad and weary. Don't oppress me with consolations... you don't know where an implacable creative drive can lead, especially when, in a mad thirst for torment, one has invented the intolerable"perpetual incompletion." ... Write. Franz [Schubert]and I send you a kiss. Ludwig [Beethoven] has decidedly too bad a character.Let him grumble. (Letter, 7 October 1969) and Chant apreschant were recorded in 1969, 20-23 December. Sequence Copenhagen for Valois records (MB 951), with Josephine Nendick, Noel Lee, the Prisma Ensemble, and the Copenhagen Percussion Group, conducted by TamasVeto. JB was present at the recordingsessions. 1970, 1 October. JB started a score which he called Arrachede... commentaireenformede lecture du Temps Restitue.Three staves for clarinetsand chorus entry (SATB) marked "Sprechstimme. Imprecise pitches but different in pitch register." 1971, 1 June. JB applied for the post of professor of analysis at the Paris Conservatoire. 1971, 15 June. The High Court of Paris ordered JB and Editions du Seuil to pay 3000 francs in "moral damages" to the estate of Erik Satie for the passage concerning relations between Satie and Debussy in the book Debussy,published in 1962. JB appealed.

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1971, 22 July. JB was notified that his applicationto the Conservatoirehad been rejected by the appointments board. 1971-72. JB was hospitalised severaltimes and was operated on. ... I simply wanted to tell you this: I believe I have won ... a kind of austerity and gravity that forbids any frivolity. This is the cost of La Mort de Virgile,which has cut me off (if I may say so) from ordinary lives. Humble I am, proud too, not because of myself-it seems to me-but because of "that which I represent" (you know the quotation) in other words Music, my only life ... (Letter, 29 January1972) 1972, 25 February. Fran9oiseThinat gave the first public performancein Franceof the Sonata, in Orleans. 1972,15 March. The ParisCourt of Appeals upheld the verdict of 15 June 1971. The incriminatingpassagewas changed. du 1972, 13 July. JB drew up a detailed plan of composition for Portiques Feu ("what ought to be beyond T[emps] R[estitue]") and signed and dated it. A single page of music in fair copy survives (for three sopranos, three mezzos, three altos, three tenors, three baritones, three basses). (with 1973, 9 April. Performancein Paris, Maison de la Radio, of Sequence Bernadette Val and an instrumental group conducted by Alain Louvier) restitue(Anne Bartelloni, French Radio Chamber Choir, Ars and Le Temps Nova instrumentalgroup, conducted by Jean-PaulKreder). 1973, 15 April. Roger Woodward played the Sonata at the Royan Festival. He had recorded it in London in autumn 1972 for EMI records (EMD 5511);JB was present at the recordingsessions. 1973, 29 June. JB was made Chevalierof the Ordre National du Merite. 1973, 10 August. JB was stricken with hemiplegia and taken to the Beaujon Hospital. He was transferredto La Salpetriereon 13 August, operated on for intracerebralhaematoma the next day. He died on 17 August and was buried at the cemetery in Trelevern. -translated by Adrian Jack

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NOTES

1. Letters were made availableto the present writer by their recipientsand since the vast majority wished to remain anonymous, no names are given.