At the Paris Conservatory, Alain Bancquart studied violin, viola, chamber music, counterpoint, and fugue, as well as composition with Darius Milhaud and then Louis Saguer. From 1961 to 1973, he was the third-chair violist at the Orchestre national de France. He became musical director or the Orchestres de régions de l’ORTF (Office de radiodiffusion-télévision française) in 1973–1974, and then of the Orchestre national de France in 1975–1976. In 1977, he was named Inspector of Music at the Ministry of Culture. He kept this role until 1984, and was simultaneously the producer of Perspectives on the Twentieth Century at Radio France. There he met the composer Ivan Wyschnegradsky, who would influence his work on microtonality, which was driven by “the need for a clean break with the tonal system.”¹

In 1984, Marc Bleuse called on Bancquart to redesign the composition curriculum of the Paris Conservatory and to open a composition class. The same year, he created the Collectif de recherche instrumentale de synthèse sonore alongside Hugues Dufourt and Tristan Murail. Their objective was to better understand the impact and musical potential of the new electronic technologies that were still little studied.

In 1977, Bancquart also participated in the creation of the Centre de documentation de la musique contemporaine and in 1978 in that of the association Musique française d’aujourd’hui, whose mission is to produce sound and video recordings of contemporary French classical music. In 1995, Bancquart stepped down from his role at these institutions but remained responsible for a seminar called “New Intervals” at the Paris Conservatory.

Bancquart’s compositions are notable for their micro-intervals, as evident from his 1968 piece Thrène I, which uses essentially quarter tones, to his 1995 work Solitude du Minotaure, which features sixteenth tones played on a customized piano conceived by the composer Julián Carrillo. Bancquart described his work as “composing fields of durations by anamorphoses.”² Widely used in visual art of the Renaissance, anamorphosis describes an image that is distorted unless viewed from a particular angle. Bancquart’s reference to this concept hints that he imagined music visually.

“Without mysticism, there is no music, because to create is an ethic,” wrote Paul Méfano to accompany a monographic disc dedicated to his friend. Bancquart claimed to be an atheist, but indeed a large part of his catalog “reconnects in the text with the sense of the sacred.”³ His works are often based on mystical texts, notably those of the Christian poet Jean-Claude Renard (Cinq Dits de Jean-Claude Renard, 1986–1987), Saint John of the Cross ([work: 55359][Veiled Erotic], 1974–1975), the Book of Revelation (Symphony No. III, 1983), and Paul Claudel’s “Cantique de Mesa” from Partage de Midi (Symphony No. V, 1991–1992), as well as the Egyptian Book of the Dead (Ceremonial II and V, 1984–1985). Almost all his other texts, which are either set to music or written to accompany the composition of a piece, are by his wife, the poet Marie-Claire Bancquart. Examples include Strophes (1970), Magique circonstancielle (1975), L’amant déserté (1978), Les tarots d’Ulysse (1984), [work: 6611][Icare] (1997), Au grand lit du monde (2009), Le cri peut être tendre, aussi (2013), Symphony No. 8, Viendrait peut-être Qui (2018), and Mo(r)t (2020).

Bancquart was awarded the Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique (SACEM) Grand Prix and the Grand Prix National de Musique. His compositions are published by Henry Lemoine.

^{1. Quoted by Pierre Gervsasoni in “La mort du compositeur Alain Bancquart,” Le Monde, 31 January 2022.↩}

^{2. Alain Bancquart, Musique: habiter le temps (Lyon: Éditions Symétrie, 2003), 74↩}

^{3. Jean-Marc Chouvel, “Texte et musique dans l’œuvre de Alain Bancquart: Autour d’une analyse – Les Cinq dits de Jean-Claude Renard,” Les Cahiers du CIREM 28–29 (June–September 1993): 67.↩}