Jean Barraque's Sonate performed by Marilyn Nonken

Marilyn Nonken has presented hightly acclaimed performances of Jean Barraque's Sonate pour piano. Barraque authority Paul Griffiths wrote in The New York Times, "The program began with [Barraque's] Sonata for piano, played by Marilyn Nonken in a performance that was unusually but persuasively light in texture and skipping in motion. Perhaps too much has been made of what is heavy and oppressed in the work's three-quarter-hour progress. For Ms. Nonken, it is also fantastical, and it's just as intense that way, with a sharp glint in its staccato chords, a clear sense of the churning harmony in the most strictly determined sections and a nice scaling of tempos, so that one section bounces out of another. The silences of the latter part were duly ominous, but the music maintained the possibility of new adventure. The last note, instead of being the final nail in the coffin, was a bright point of light and promise." 

"Our century imposes greatness, not to say grandiloquence" said Barraque, whose awesome Sonata certainly embodies the former. Completed in 1952, the Sonata is a work that is typical of Barraque's music and of his interests at the time. Traditional forms held no interest for Barraque and yet the Sonata falls in line with great piano sonatas of the past, it contains all the drama and detail of sonatas by Beethoven, Schubert, and Liszt.

Rather than defining the sonata form by contrasting keys and themes, Barraque uses density, register, dynamics, and non-tonal harmonic areas to bring the melodic material, which is characteristically angular and unpredictable, into relief. Barraque wasn't destroying history with his ideas but continuing them with all of the new musical resources of the mid-twentieth century at his disposal. 

Jean Barraque (1928-1973) sang in the choir at Notre Dame and studied music theory with Jean Langlais. In 1948 he attended Olivier Messiaen's classes at the Paris Conservatoire and became deeply influenced by the intellectual atmosphere and the musical inventiveness that Messiaen encouraged. Perhaps most important, however, was Barraque's contact with serial techniques that he would utilize in the Sonata and refine and reinvent throughout his career. After completing the Sonata, he became involved with Pierre Schaeffer's electronic studio at Radio France, producing his only electronic work, "Etude" (1953). At this time he met Michel Foucault, who both inspired and invigorated him. At the suggestion of Foucault, he substituted texts of Nietzsche for the original Boudelaire and Rimbaud in a set of songs that would be revised and reorchestrated to become "Sequence" (1955). Barraque's output slowed considerably after his next two pieces, "le temps restitute" (1957, reorchestrated in 1968) and "...au dela du hasard" (1959) both because of personal problems and creative uncertainty. "Art must evolve toward death, must be achieved through 'endless unachievement'" said Barraque, acknowledging the difficulty of continuing his work. The two pieces that were to follow, "Chant apres chant" (1966) and a Concerto for clarinet (1968), were Barraque's last. Although several projects were planned, little music was written before Barraque's untimely death in 1973.