Biography
Ballif received instruction from Messiaen during his time at the Paris Conservatoire. Within the theoretical treatise Introduction à la métatonalité he set forth a system intended to broaden the scope of tonality instead of discarding it after the fashion of atonality. That system, termed metatonality, rests on an eleven-tone scale simultaneously embracing chromaticism and a tonal foundation. His purpose was to sidestep the disorientation produced by atonality, substituting in its stead a freely conceived tonality. Environmental sounds also entered his scores in the manner employed by John Cage, among them passages in which the orchestra reproduces the textures of natural phenomena.