Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Family and Formation
- 2 Langlais, and a Beginning
- 3 Messaien, and Friendships
- 4 Sonata
- 5 A Nietzsche Sequence
- 6 Musique Concrète
- 7 Foucault
- 8 The Death of Virgil
- 9 You
- 10 Time Regiven
- 11 … Beyond Chance
- 12 Since Debussy
- 13 Silence
- 14 Debussy
- 14a Citation: Hommage à Claude Debussy
- 15 Song After Song
- 16 Concerto
- 17 The Man Lying Down
- Notes
- Chronology
- Catalogue
- Writings
- Bibliography
- Index
- The Sea on Fire: Jean Barraqué
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Family and Formation
- 2 Langlais, and a Beginning
- 3 Messaien, and Friendships
- 4 Sonata
- 5 A Nietzsche Sequence
- 6 Musique Concrète
- 7 Foucault
- 8 The Death of Virgil
- 9 You
- 10 Time Regiven
- 11 … Beyond Chance
- 12 Since Debussy
- 13 Silence
- 14 Debussy
- 14a Citation: Hommage à Claude Debussy
- 15 Song After Song
- 16 Concerto
- 17 The Man Lying Down
- Notes
- Chronology
- Catalogue
- Writings
- Bibliography
- Index
- The Sea on Fire: Jean Barraqué
Summary
Between the spring of 1956 and the end of your life—alongside La mort de Virgile and balancing it, but balancing it as negative against positive, because this was partly the quarry out of which you created your music—came your work on Debussy, and especially on La mer.
That work began in your private classes of 1956–61 and continued during your time with the CNRS (1961–8), but, as with La mort de Virgile, much more of it remained subterranean than was ever expressed. In October 1962 Editions du Seuil brought out your book on Debussy, written for their series of compact introductions aimed at a general audience. The same month the CNRS presented a centenary colloquium on Debussy, to which you presented a paper on the topic of your research, the topic closest to you as a thinker about music: ‘Debussy: ou l'approche d'une organisation autogène de la composition’. Then in 1968, for the fiftieth anniversary of Debussy's death, you wrote a two-page homage for Le courrier musical de France, the leading periodical for French amateurs of music at the time, as the less august Guide du concert had been in the fifties—and under the same editor, Raymond Lyon. (This tribute, translated in its entirety after the present chapter, is valuable as one of your last writings and because it touches on so many of your creative concerns.)
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Sea on Fire: Jean Barraqué , pp. 133 - 142Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2003