Sequence (Parts)

Barraque Sequence (Parts)
for Soprano solo, Drums (3), Vibraphone, (Xylophone), Celesta, (Glockenspiel), Piano, Harp, Violin, Violoncello

The small output of Messiaen’s pupil Jean Barraqué has been expanded by the rediscovery of several works.  From his unpublished compositions which have only recently become available, a number of early works are now being performed for the first time.

Jean Barraqué (1928–1973) is one of those composers, like Alban Berg and Edgard Varèse, who published a remarkably small number of works.  But the brevity of their lists of publications is more than compensated for by the content and significance of their compositions.  When Barraqué met the Italian patron Aldo Bruzzichelli in 1960, he found in him a publisher with whom he published six works.  These included the Sonate pour piano (1950–1952), four works for voice and ensemble for various scorings, and finally his Concerto for vibraphone, clarinet and six instrumental groups, composed in 1962–68.  In the 1990s the Association Jean Barraqué assigned the publication rights for these works to Bärenreiter-Verlag.

It had been known for some time that Barraqué had written a number of other compositions before his powerful Sonate, but no further details were known.  Barraqué is still regarded as a largely unknown ‘great’, not only in his early works, but in regard to his whole output, which includes an essayistic oeuvre of high quality.  In contrast to the extrovert Pierre Boulez, Barraqué was the quiet, introverted student, different from other composers emerging from Messiaen’s class.

It is a stroke of luck that Barraqué preserved his early works.  The unspectacular piece of luggage containing his unpublished musical works, stored for a long time in a loft in Paris and only unearthed recently, has turned out to be a true treasure trove. The suitcase contains a wealth of autograph manuscripts, including many from the 1940s.  These fill the gaps in our knowledge about Barraqué’s early works and document his multifaceted compositional work dating from before the Sonate.