Tendencies and Contrasts in the Music of Henry Barraud

Abstract

The most recent Festival of Contemporary Music at Venice brought to light a new work by Henry Barraud, a work the success of which was immediately established, not only at Venice itself but by virtue of various performances which it had during the Paris season that has just ended and which were given either as public concerts or for the “Jeunesses Musicales de France” or by radio. It is a Te Deum for chorus and instrumental ensemble dedicated to the memory of Serge Koussevitzky. Last winter, too, the Concerts Lamoureux of Paris gave the first performance of a new Symphonie pour cordes which was also received with like success by the audience and by the critics. Finally, during recent months, the Symphonie de Numance has had a number of performances on European radio stations. Here we are then, confronted by three works which bear witness to the rich and ripe maturity of a composer who is just now at the height of his powers, who has evolved an idiom which is strong and personal, a forceful and novel language of his own, an emotional climate of a very special nature, and who now exercises complete mastery in the handling of his means of expression.