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Jean BarraquJean Barraqu (January 17, 1928 – August 17, 1973) was a French composer. Barraqu was born in Puteaux. He studied in Paris with Jean Langlais and Olivier Messiaen and, through Messiaen, became interested in serialism. It is thought that Barraqu destroyed many of his early works, leaving his piano sonata, completed in 1952, as his earliest surviving work. It is a large piece, lasting almost an hour, and is divided into two connected sections, roughly equal in length. The texture of the work is often compared to Pierre Boulez, though the overall structure is quite different from anything Boulez has written, and more closely resembles the late sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven. The sonata was premiered by Yvonne Loriod. Barraqu then produced his only electronic piece, the Etude (1954), made at Pierre Schaeffer's studio. He then planned a large-scale piece, or rather collection of pieces, based on Hermann Broch's novel The Death of Virgil, a book which Barraqu's friend and lover Michel Foucault recommended to him. He completed three of the projected parts: ... au dela du hasard (1959), Chant aprs chant (1966), and Le temps restitu (1957 before his death. Fragments of the other parts also exist. Barraqu also wrote a concerto in 1968, which is related to The Death of Virgil, but not actually part of that cycle. The only other extant piece by Barraqu is Sequence (1954) for soprano and ensemble. Barraqu's use of tone rows in his work is quite distinctive. Rather than using a single tone row for an entire piece, as Anton Webern did, or using a number of unrelated rows in one work, as Alban Berg or Arnold Schoenberg sometimes did, Barraqu starts by using one row, and then subtly alters it to get a second. This second row is then used for a while before being slightly altered again to make a third. This process continues throughout the work, so that the tone row at the end of the piece is completely different from that at the start. Barraqu was in a car accident in 1964 and suffered bad health for the rest of his life. He died in Paris in 1973. His very small output has left him as a somewhat obscure figure, although his work is often praised, and the sonata is seen as one of the great pianistic challenges of the 20th century. Barraqu, Jean Barraqu, Jean Barraqu, Jean Barraqu, Jean Barraqu, Jean
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