Jean Barraqué

Jean-Henri-Alphonse Barraqué (17 January 1928 – 17 August 1973) was a French composer and music writer. His relatively small is known for its serialism. Life Barraqué was 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, 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. With hindsight, however, 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 a