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A Biographical Chronology of Jean BarraquéAuthor(s): Rose-Marie Janzen and Adrian JackSource: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 27, No. 1, (Winter, 1989), pp. 234-245Published by: Perspectives of New MusicStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/833269Accessed: 11/08/2008 06:26

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A BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONOLOGY OF JEAN BARRAQUE

ROSE-MARE JANZEN

THE FRENCH COMPOSER Jean Barraque was introduced to the English- speaking world by a laudatory chapter in Since Debussy, a survey of contem-

porary music by Andre Hodeir, published in the United States and England in 1961 (New York: Grove Press, Inc., and London: Secker and Warburg). The terms in which Barraque's music was described made many sceptical of the composer's importance, yet by the time he died in 1973 at the age of forty-five, his small output was attracting increasing attention. He left only six works which he recognised, all of them on a large scale. Three belonged to a huge project inspired by thephilosoph- ical novel The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch. Death was a central concern to the composer, and he recognised that his own La Mort de Virgile would never be complete. A pupil of Messiaen, Barraque evolved his own serial technique which he put tofundamentally poetic purposes. The character of his music is well described in an extract below from a letter he wrote after a rehearsal ofChant apres chant. He

Jean Barraque

was bitterly opposed to avant-garde extremes such as aleatoricism, which he thought rootless and irresponsible. He revered Beethoven and Schubert, and he was not ashamed to say that the Romantic period was his favourite. But despite the deep respect Barraque won from leading musicians in France and abroad, and the loyalty with which he inspired his students, he remains an isolated figure and each per- formance of his music has the character of a special event. Which is no less than he intended.

-Adrian Jack

The following chronology includes only properly verified 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 inevitably important 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's maternal grandfather, born in Bue, near Sancerre (departement of Cher). (Died 26 January 1945.)

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 Pyrenees- Atlantiques). (Died 9 June 1975.)

1903, 9 January. Germaine Millet, JB's mother, the younger of two sis- ters, born in Paris. (Died 25 December 1987.)

1923, 9 July. Grat Barraque and Germaine Millet married in Puteaux (dipartement of Hauts-de-Seine).

1928, 17 January. Jean-Henri-Alphonse Barraque born in a clinic in Puteaux, where his maternal grandparents lived. Baptism at the collegiate church of Montmorency (Val-d'Oise), where his parents lived. He was an only child.

Circa 1931. The Barraque family settled in Paris, rue du Rocher.

Circa 1932. Grat Barraque bought business premises at 1, rue Jacquard, with lodgings attached. JB lived there until 1950. Since both parents worked, he was often left in the charge of their maid Francine Le 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 artistic life, is in Brittany. I was fascinated by 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 Unfinished Sym- phony 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 first got to know Brittany. ("Propos impromptu," pub- lished by Raymond Lyon in Le Courrier Musical de France 26, [Second quarter, 1969]:76)

1939. At the beginning of the war, Grat Barraque was 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-du- Nord).

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 educa- tion 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-Seminaire of the Diocese of Paris at Char-

enton.) Subjects taught: Singing, French, Latin, Greek, German, Mathe-

matics, 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 years old-a teacher took us to his room and put on a record, and it was the Unfinished Symphony. Previously I had had

very superficial contact with music; I came from a middle-class family, I had learnt the 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 know music. 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 Nocturne in 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 classes and Philosophy, staying until 1947. The same subjects were taught up to Philosophy as at the Ecole Diocesaine. Academic marks: fairly average. According to his schoolfellows, JB was nei- ther very hard-working nor very ambitious in his studies, but above all pas- sionate 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 Lan-

glais. Piano lessons with a teacher who followed the method of Marie Jaell.

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 analysis as 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, some- thing 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 inter- ludes and texts from Nietzsche, became Sequence for voice, percussion, and instrumental ensemble (1955).

When I left Messiaen, Siquence was already composed. It wasn't my first work. There had already been some thirty before it. I never com-

posed so much as before Sequence, but all the same, for me, Sequence is

my first work, all the rest count as essays; a little bit of everything, try- 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 Etude for tape there.

1950s. JB earned his living by doing various kinds of work. He went on lec- ture tours for Jeunesses Musicales de France. During the years 1951-53, 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 Rose- Marie Janzen, among others. He wrote the analyses in the first volume of Larousse de la Musique, published under the direction of Norbert Dufourcq in 1957. Like other musicians of his generation, he wrote articles for various periodicals and magazines, notably "Resonances privilegiees, leur justifica- tion" (Cahiers de la Compagnie Renaud-Barrault [1953]: 27); "Des gouts et des couleurs" (Domaine Musical [1954]: 14); "Rythme et developpement" (Polyphonie [1954]: 47).

... 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 cowardliness of 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, remains incomprehen- sible, 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 irrational and go mad .... (Letter, November 1952)

... Having emerged from the nightmare and amphigory of my child- hood and adolescence, I embarked on 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 artistic evolution, my creativity as it is now-after so much suffering, frenzy, frustration, and disaster-may be fulfilled in the isolated abundance of rigorous despair without compromise, with- 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 manuscript is 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 com-

positeurs." Some performances and even recordings were planned, by Marcelle Mercenier, Paul Jacobs, David Tudor, but they did not mate- rialise. The Sonata finally became known through the recording Yvonne Loriod made for Vega records (see below).

1955. Michel Foucault introduced JB to The Death of Virgil, the philosoph- ical novel by the Austrian Hermann Broch.

1956, 10-11 March. First performance of Sequence at the Theatre du Petit- Marigny, at a Domaine Musical concert, with Ethel Semser, soprano, and 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 reissued by 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 Temps restitue (La Mort de Virgile), a seventy-four-page manuscript score signed and dated March 1956-Paris 20 October 1957. The cover is dated 11 December 1957.

1957-59. Work on two projects of "dramatic composition" in collabora- tion with Jean Thibaudeau and Jacques Polieri. The projects did not mate- rialise; some of the music was later used in... au-dela du hasard.

1959, 22 December. JB completed and signed the manuscript of... au- delk du hasard (La Mort de Virgile). He later dedicated the work to Andre Hodeir, 12 June 1961.

1960, 26 January. First performance at the Concerts du Domaine Musical of... au-dela du hasard, for four instrumental groups 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 Pierre Boulez.

... au-dela du hasard is a kind of multidimensional musical vision. Sev- eral movements are interrelated, appearing, reappearing, and vanish-

ing, embodying the idea of strangeness and heterogeneity. The per- petual variation has to do with the notion of "musical oblivion." All

parameters ... pitches, durations, register, timbre, set up a complete contradiction with the orchestration. The jazz group is conceived here as one block of sound among others, as a harmonic agglomeration. (JB interviewed by Lucien Malson, Les Cahiers du Jazz 4 [1961]: 70)

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 publishing business and subsequently published all of Barraque's work.

1961, 1 January. JB became a research fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He was appointed research assistant on 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 (afterwards translated into German, Japanese, Swedish, and Spanish).

1963, September. Aldo Bruzzichelli published Sequence.

1964, 18 January. JB had a car accident and was taken to the Ambroise- Pare hospital at Neuilly.

1966. Chant apres chant (La Mort de Virgile) was composed in a few weeks, 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," daughter of Fran- cine 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 utter- ance .... (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; Percussions de Strasbourg, con- ducted by Charles Bruck.

1966, July. JB began the composition of Lysanias (La Mort de Virgile) at Malesherbes. The first performance was planned for November, 1966. JB fell ill during the summer and was unable to finish the work. He worked on it again, particularly in 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, unaware that it was the first public performance of the work, previously known only from the record and the score.

1967, fourth quarter. Aldo Bruzzichelli published... au-delA du hasard.

1968, 8 February. JB completed the final manuscript of Le Temps restitue in Florence.

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1968, 4 April. First performance of Le Temps restitue at the Royan Festival:

Helga Pilarczyk, soprano; soloists of the French Radio Choir (directed by Jean-Paul Kreder); Ensemble du Domaine Musical, conducted by Gilbert

Amy. The first Paris performance was 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 Charles Bruck.

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, play- ing in drama and sadness. A sumptuous virtuosity which comes, goes, plunges, oblivious of surrounding landscape ... like a kite. Yes, some-

thing 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 manuscript was dedicated 20 March 1969 to Claude and Hubert Rostaing.

1968, late November. Fire in the building at rue Patureau after an explo- sion caused by a gas leak. For several months JB stayed with friends or in a hotel.

... In the course of my moves I LOST all the dossier and half the writ- ten score of Portiques du Feu. I cried over it like a madman. You can understand how inadmissible it is, how dreadful for a creator to 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 Valois records (MB 952). JB was present at the recording sessions.

1969, 6 October. JB, in hospital for a check-up, outlined a project for L'Homme couche (La Mort de Virgile), a lyric work he did not complete. It seems to have been planned in three acts. JB detailed the literary themes on several pages in January 1972.

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... As soon as I recover I shall go back to Lysanias, then Hymnes a Plotia, then Portiques du Feu, then... a very big project I'd like to talk to you about, which would be the sum of all my creative thought. 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 [est axe 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 sub- lime 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 decid-

edly too bad a character. Let him grumble. (Letter, 7 October 1969)

1969, 20-23 December. Sequence and Chant apres chant were recorded in Copenhagen for Valois records (MB 951), with Josephine Nendick, Noel Lee, the Prisma Ensemble, and the Copenhagen Percussion Group, con- ducted by Tamas Veto. JB was present at the recording sessions.

1970, 1 October. JB started a score which he called Arrache de... commen- taire enforme de lecture du Temps Restitue. Three staves for clarinets and cho- rus 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 application to the Conservatoire had been rejected by the appointments board.

1971-72. JB was hospitalised several times 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 quota- tion) in other words Music, my only life ... (Letter, 29 January 1972)

1972, 25 February. Fran9oise Thinat gave the first public performance in France of the Sonata, in Orleans.

1972,15 March. The Paris Court of Appeals upheld the verdict of 15 June 1971. The incriminating passage was changed.

1972, 13 July. JB drew up a detailed plan of composition for Portiques du 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).

1973, 9 April. Performance in Paris, Maison de la Radio, of Sequence (with Bernadette Val and an instrumental group conducted by Alain Louvier) and Le Temps restitue (Anne Bartelloni, French Radio Chamber Choir, Ars Nova instrumental group, conducted by Jean-Paul Kreder).

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 recording sessions.

1973, 29 June. JB was made Chevalier of the Ordre National du Merite.

1973, 10 August. JB was stricken with hemiplegia and taken to the Beau-

jon Hospital. He was transferred to La Salpetriere on 13 August, operated on for intracerebral haematoma 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 available to the present writer by their recipients and since the vast majority wished to remain anonymous, no names are given.