BANCQUART Alain (1934-2022)

See the biography on the composer's website

Alain Bancquart was born in 1934 in Dieppe and has lived in Paris since 1941. A violinist and viola-player, he trained at the Paris Conservatory from 1947 to 1958. He studied the violin in the class of Gabriel Bouillon, the fugue and the counterpoint with Simone Plé-Caussade and composition with Darius Milhaud. Independently of the Conservatory, he completed his apprenticeship in compositional techniques with Louis Saguer up until 1963. A talented viola-player, he held the third solo viola desk in the Orchestra National de France from 1961 to 1973; this activity left him time for composing.
 
In 1973 he was called upon by Pierre Vozlinsky to become musical director of the ORTF’s regional orchestras and thus take charge of the programming and organisation of the concerts for the orchestras of Lille, Strasburg and Nice. In July 1974 he organised the seminar ‘Permanence du Surréalisme’ at Seillans in the Var region, with his wife Marie-Claire Bancquart. 
 
In 1975 he took on the musical direction of the Orchestre National de France before becoming, in 1977, Chief Inspector for Music and in parallel, a producer for Radio France. It was when working on the concert series ‘Perspectives du XXe siècle’ that Alain Bancquart met Ivan Wyschnegradsky, who was to influence him in his compositional research into the organisation of pitch and duration. In 1984 he left his position with the Ministry and the Radio in favour of teaching. At the Paris Conservatory he was in charge of harmony and counterpoint and composition studies and was a composition teacher. He also taught in Italy, Germany (Darmstadt), the UK (London) and Israel (Tel Aviv).
 
Since 1995 Alain Bancquart has devoted himself almost exclusively to composition, though he is still in charge of a seminar on ’New intervals’ at the Paris Conservatory, and directs an instrumental workshop for contemporary music at the Versailles Regional Conservatory.
 
Alain Bancquart has done much to champion and promote contemporary music. In 1967 he began to study micro-intervals, working to integrate them in musical syntax, at times going so far as greatly to modify the scordatura of certain instruments. In the same spirit he created, with Tolia Nikiprowetsky, a workshop for instrumental music. This workshop, though short-lived (from 1969 to 1970), had as its aim the study of the problems of contemporary instrument making together with the relationships of instruments with contact microphones. Alain Bancquart was also the instigator of the creation of the Cdmc (Centre de Documentation de la Musique Contemporaine), and of MFA, Musique Française d’Aujourd’hui, a support body for phonographic recordings. He also joined the Itinéraire and with Hugues Dufourt and Tristan Murail founded the Criss, Collectif de Recherche Instrumentale et de Synthèse Sonore. This collective, that lasted three years (1977-1980), had the aim, notably, of constituting an alphabet of sounds in movement, and took inspiration from the sound continuum produced by electro-acoustics in all areas of composition and syntax. Finally, in the 1990s, Alain Bancquart set up a network of free concerts of contemporary music: the Orme, Organisation de Résistance et Musique/Esthétique, which gave its first concert on the anniversary day of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach, 21 March 1994.
 
Alain Bancquart chose as his spiritual fathers Anton Bruckner and Olivier Messiaen. Born between the two world wars, he shows in his output a desire for reconstruction. His favourite themes are the sacred and spirituality. The texts that inspire him are often by Marie-Claire Bancquart, poet, novelist, essayist and teacher at the Sorbonne. Strophes for mixed chorus and 6 instruments (1970), Proche for bass voice and cello (1972), Magique circonstancielle for mezzo-soprano, reciter, orchestra and tape (1975), and Voix for 12 mixed voices (1981) are illustrative of their collaboration. The main concern of Alain Bancquart is to serve the poetic form as well as the meaning of the text. In this way he seeks to imbue the musical work with the literary work, from the point of view of both meaning and form. Particularly sensitive to the emotional power of the human voice, he exploits various vocal treatments: undirected speech, directed speech, recitative, melismatic singing, cries. Often considered the ‘quarter-tone specialist’, Alain Bancquart believes that the micro-intervallic scale enables the rediscovery of the melodic language. He uses micro-tonality in nearly all his works. These include Piano Sonata (1987), Tresses pour Martine (1999) in quarter tones, Respiration/Silence for string quartet (1999) in eighths of tones, and Solitude du Minotaure (1996) and Habiter l'ambre (2000) in sixteenths of tones. With these symphonies, Alain Bancquart also places his work in the tradition of ‘grand form’, revealing an art of polyphony inherited from Darius Milhaud, notably in the Second and Fourth Symphonies.
 
The work catalogue of Alain Bancquart is highly varied. He has written solo music (Flute Sonata, 1986; Caprice for violin, 1990; Vous devenez une île heureuse for cello, 2002) as well as chamber music (Possibles, 1967; Une et désunie, 1970), concertos (Concerto for viola and orchestra, 1965; De l'étrange circulation de la sève, concerto for guitar and 24 flutes, 1990) and vocal music (Les Tarots d'Ulysse, 1984; Cinq dits de Jean-Claude Renard, 1986; Suite au dieu lune for 6 male voices, 1988). His latest symphony (2009) is a homage to his teacher Louis Saguer.