Page "Jean Barraqué" Paragraph 4

Barraqué stated that he wrote about 30 works before those that he eventually acknowledged ; as far as is known they were destroyed by him.

They included a Nocturne and Mouvement lent for piano, at least three piano sonatas, a sonata for unaccompanied violin, and a Symphony in C sharp minor.

The presumably fourth, but un-numbered Piano Sonata, for which he gave the date 1952, was his earliest acknowledged work.

Barraqué then produced his only electronic piece, the musique concrète Etude ( 1954 ), made at Pierre Schaeffer's studio.

Subsequently he planned a large-scale cycle of pieces, La Mort de Virgile, based on Hermann Broch's novel The Death of Virgil, a book which Barraqué's friend and sometime lover Michel Foucault recommended to him.

This cycle, along with other pieces deriving from it or acting as commentaries upon it, he envisaged as his principal lifelong creative project.

Following the scheme of the novel, it was to be divided into four sub-cycles: ' Water ( The Arrival )', ' Fire ( The Descent )', ' Earth ( The Expectancy )' and ' Air ( The Return )'.

Most of Barraqué's creative efforts went into the works which were to take their place in ' Fire ( The Descent )', which-to give an idea of the projected scope of the whole design-was to have consisted of thirteen works.

Before his death he completed two of the projected parts: Chant aprés chant ( 1966 ), and Le temps restitué ( 1957 / 68 ).

Fragments of some of the other parts exist.