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(More customer reviews)THE SEA ON FIRE is Paul Griffiths' biography of the French composer Jean Barraque (1928-1973). This is a fascinating figure in many respects, for he was briefly the lover of Michael Foucault, stuck with Darmstadt serialism even after his colleagues began to move on, and wrote only seven works (but grandiose ones) before his death at the of 45. Though Barraque's Piano Sonata is one of the great works of 1950s modernism, he has mainly been overshadowed by figures like Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Nonetheless, a small group of fans kept his memory alive, and CPO's 1998 Complete Works set made his small oeuvre accessible to all.
In an unusual turn, Griffiths writes the biography in the second person: "It begins like this, Jean. You were born around midday on 17 January 1928 at a clinic in Puteaux ... After returning from the 1947 summer holiday you revised the finale to your Fantaisie ... Your creative achievements of 1950-55 --- the Sonata, Sequence and the electronic Etude inevitably came with personal and professional change ..." This seems appropriate with such a mysterious figure as Barraque, whose life and inner thoughts must be cautiously sought out. Griffiths won interviews with such acquaintances of the composer as Pierre Boulez, Roger Goodward, Andre Hodier and Barraque's lover Jeanne Bisilliat.
While there are no score samples in the book, Griffiths does talk about Barraque's music in some technical depth. Clearly the book is meant for those who have some idea what twelve-tone serialism is and how it was further developed by the postwar generation. The book is helpful for better understanding Barraque's music, and Griffiths gives lots of details about the numerous sketches that the composer left behind.
This is not a terribly deep biography. There are no photographs, and the account of Barraque's last years is nothing more than a listing of where he was when. Nonetheless, it does tell the reader much about this overlooked composer and his remarkable music.
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Jean Barraqué is increasingly being recognized as one of the great composers of the second half of the 20th century. Though he left only seven works, his voice in each of them is unmistakeable, and powerful. He had no doubt of his responsibility, as a creator, to take his listeners on challenging adventures that could not but leave them changed. After the collapse of morality he had witnessed as a child growing up during the Second World War, and having taken notice of so much disarray in the culture around him, he set himself to make music that would, out of chaos, speak. Three others were crucial to him. One was Pierre Boulez, who, three years older, provided him with keys to a new musical language-a language more dramatic, driving and passionate than Boulez's. Another was Michel Foucault, to whom he was close personally for a while, and with whom he had a dialogue that was determinative for both of them. Finally, in the writings of Hermann Broch-and especially in the novel The Death of Virgil-he found the myth he needed to realize musically. He played for high stakes, and he took risks-with himself as in his art. Intemperate and difficult, even with his closest friends, he died in 1973 at the age of forty-five.Paul Griffiths was chief music critic for the London Times (1982-92) and The New Yorker (1992-96) and since 1996 has written regularly for the New York Times. He has written books on Boulez, Cage, Messiaen, Ligeti, Davies, Bartók and Stravinsky, as well as several librettos, among them The Jewel Box (Mozart, 1991), Marco Polo (Tan Dun, 1996) and What Next? (Elliott Carter, 1999).
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