André Hodeir was, of course, your ally in more than …au delà du hasard and your courses of that period: he was devoted to your cause. Quite apart from introducing you to Polieri, he had kept you at the front of his mind during a trip to New York, Los Angeles and Mexico City in February-May 1957. Though so far away, he had continued to exert himself on your behalf with Polieri, with David Tudor and with the composer-conductor Gunther Schuller, who was to introduce you to your publisher and give you your first American performance. Also in 1957 Hodeir had begun to think about a book.

When that book came out—as Since Debussy in New York in January 1961, the French version following a few months later—you had received just four performances: three of Séquence, and the première of …au delà du hasard. Séquence and the Sonata also existed on record. Nothing was published.

Yet this was enough for Hodeir: ‘Despite the fact that so far his complete works consist of but a few hundred pages of manuscript, a number of musicians already consider Barraqué's music the most important contribution to their art since Debussy. I, for one, am tempted to rate it even higher.’

Since Debussy is a hero story in which the hero is music, stepping forward through the works of several composers—all of whom discerned what was wanted from them and provided it in some measure until failure of music—historical nerve overtook them and they returned to old solutions—before it would reach its present fulfilment: in you.