ALAIN BANCQUART ELECTRONIC-ONDES MARTENOT LP MICROTONAL-JULIAN CARRILLO-AVANT

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ALAIN BANCQUART

 THRENE 1 & 2 / L'AMANT DESERTE LP

Sappho 001  

Rare original french issue from the 70's on the Sappho microlabel featuring the electronics ensemble Ensembles d'Instruments Electroniques de l'Itineraire.

Some info on the release:  Very rare electronic avant-garde album from microtonal composer Alain Bancquart featuring his "L'Amant Deserte for 2 electric guitars, 2 ondes Martenot, 2 electric organs and synthesisers" and his "Threne" I & II for strings. Released on the Sappho label created by Bancquart, Tristan Murail and Hugues Dufourt. They were the leading figures of spectral and microtonal music in France together with Gerad Grisey. They also created the CRISS (Collective for Instruments Research and Sound Synthesis), a sort of french Steim or Ipem. All Sappho records are filled with beautifull and highly challenging music. Long tracks with complex layers and subtle tension all over, performed by the Itinéraire, Ensemble for Electronic Instruments. Imagine Luc Ferrari, Giacinto Scelsi, Iancu Dumitrescu for the orchestral aspect and add the electronic touch of the best composers of the era such as François Bayle or other Ina-Grm members and you'll have an idea. Very impressive and intense.

Bancquart also uses calculated structure and organization in a serial manner to extend traditional instruments to their utmost limits (Threne II). The final work of this recording “L’Amant Deserte” (instrumental version) utilizes electronic instruments such as synthesizers, ring modulators, etc., to permit the construction of a “different” sound world where human beings and their inate sensitivity appear through the phenomenon of electricity.

Alain Bancquart is a French composer. He had his musical formation at the "Conservatoire national supérieur de musique de Paris" (violin, viola, chambre music, counterpoint, fugue and composition) with Darius Milhaud. He was a violist with the Orchestre National de France until 1973. He became Directeur Musical des Orchestres de Régions in l'ORTF (1973–1974), then musical director of the Orchestre National de France (1975–1976). Bancquart is also a composer. Since 1967, he has dedicated his work to the study of micro-intervals in a neo-serial approach using quarter-tones, and more recently 16th tones.

Here are some aesthetical details provided by Bancquart about his musical research: "During the 1960's, I became aware of the need to take the disintegration of the hierarchical systems of the tonal world into account, in a radical manner. Even though an evolution of harmony towards the "pansonority" of Ivan Wyshnegradsky had already shaped the theory of this period, I felt the need for a clean break with a tonal system worn thin by chromaticism. The relative dullness and vagueness of the harmony that resulted from serialism did not seem satisfactory to me. On the other hand, the three microtonal parts in Pierre Boulez's Visage Nuptial (before the unfortunate revision debased this dazzling music) lead to a discovery. The reading of this score, and the thought that the semitonal scale had been established in order to allow the existence of a modulating tonal harmony, and not the reverse, were decisive. In effect, if tonality is found to be bound in this manner to the semitonal scale, the most direct means to be finished with it obviously is by searching for other scales. Therefore I decided from this period onward to devote my work to the study of microintervallic music. For practical reasons having to do with hearing and performance, the quarter-tone was the most accessible microinterval. Nonetheless, the desire to access other, finer scales always existed for me. After a few years, thanks to a sixteenth-tone piano built by Julian Carrillo, I was able to realize what had until then been just a dream.

However, the radical conversion that I was making toward a microtonal universe was not sufficient in and of itself to solve problems. Other questions arose, perhaps more important than those concerning the pitches. It was going to take me a few years (during which solid conceptions of the harmonic and melodic possibilities of microintervals were laid out) to understand that the choice of new scales with new pitches and sounds indicated new temporal scales, if one wanted to obtain coherence in one's discourse. On this subject, I became aware of the existence of a tonal rhythm, directly related to the vertical organization of the tonal system, just as elsewhere there exists a Gregorian rhythm, which is even more supple. And so I continued to work in this manner, very isolated. The only one who had perceived the existence of these problems, and something of their solutions, was Wyschnegradsky. His major work, La loi de la pansonorité (The Law of Pansonority), was still unpublished, and it was going to take until 1996 for it to be by Pascale Criton. Some fundamental ideas of serial music have remained with me, particularly that of non-repetition. As for the non-doubling of the octave: it's not a matter of dogma, but of the sense of useless redundancy in a context which is much richer than that of the semitones. It is with regard to other parameters, in particular that of duration, that this idea of "not returning" for me has greater and greater importance. The disappearance of symmetries seems inevitable to me, if one wants to find a flexibility in the organization of phrases comparable to that of Gregorian music—take that of certain Indian music, for example. It is the idea of regular pulse itself that was common practice, just as that of tempo was the standard of the time. I was lead gradually toward a conception of musical time governed by techniques of proliferation that were very strict, but with results that were more and more unpredictable. The object further and further than its original form becomes its own anamorphosis, the venture of form becomes one of time. These ideas are still the ones which guide me in my current work."

Here you can listen to "L'amant Deserte" and "Threne II":

Alain Bancquart ~  L'amant déserté (version instrumentale) 1978 - YouTube

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Alain Bancquart ... Thrène II (1977) - YouTube

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Condition: Vinyl lies in excellent condition, looks super clean and plays nicely with some occasional crackle on side b:, while cover lies in very good+ shape, with extensive age wear (see picture).

Tracklist

L'Amant Déserté

• Composed By – Alain Bancquart
• Electric Guitar – Claude Pavy (tracks: B), François Bousch (tracks: B)
• Ensemble – Ensemble D'Instruments Électroniques De L'Itinéraire (tracks: B), Trio À Cordes De Paris
• Liner Notes – Hugues Dufourt
• Ondes Martenot – Françoise Pellié (tracks: B), Tristan Murail (tracks: B)
• Organ [Electric] – Françoise Pellié (tracks: B), Tristan Murail (tracks: B)
• Producer [In Association With] – Collectif de Recherche Instrumentale et de Synthèse Sonore (CRISS)
• Strings – Charles Frey (tracks: A), Jean Grout (tracks: A), Jean Verdier (tracks: A)
• ~

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