THIERRY LANCINO: PORTRAIT

Text by François-Gildas Tual

A strange conclusion indeed that the last measures of the Sonata for Cello (1995) by Thierry Lancino, that, according to the composer himself, slowly give the work "an air of imbalance…" Doomed to a lack of closure as well, much like The Aeneid, was a project for an opera inspired by The Death of Virgil, whereas the Requiem, created from a text by Pascal Quignard, accepts closure but obstinately refuses to choose. A few examples consistent with the notion of Open Work rather with a difficulty to take writing to completion. But couldn't we find in these troubling instances of indecision, if not a signature, at least something that testifies to the nature of the works? Something that seems to build a bridge between Antiquity and today's world, something that allows for the encounter of distant eras in a fascinating spatial and temporal merging?

There are no real contradictions in Thierry Lancino's life. Opposites cross paths, enrich each other, and, as isolated experiences, they gain meaning in the unity of existence. It is possible for him to work alongside John Chowning, to collaborate with Pierre Boulez, to teach new technologies and computer science at the IRCAM, to be a researcher at Stanford University, and also to embark on a fishing boat in Alaska. To love the green landscapes of his native Poitou passionately, to roam the banks of the Niger river, to value the serenity, in the heart of the Berry region, of the former Cistercian abbey of La Prée, and to settle finally in Manhattan.

If we may summarize Thierry Lancino's journey: born in 1954 in Civray, near Poitiers, he studied in Paris before being sent to California by the Minister of External Affairs. Put in charge of a project at the IRCAM, he received the Prix de Rome and left Paris again to go live in the Villa Medicis, in Rome. Today he lives in the USA, free from any institutional charge. Each journey being a synonym for a quest of identity, we may think of some Greek sailor going from island to island, in search of something, and discovering, as if by chance during a long Mediterranean cruise, the subject of his Requiem. His music crosses oceans and ages and writes, page after page, a sort of travelogue. Accompanied by David, by the Sibyl or by Virgil, appropriating a text by TS Eliot (Who is the third? 2009), it is comparable to these explorers of the Antarctic who, when lost on the polar ice cap, invented the presence of a companion at their side.

"To experience such a presence is sometimes brought about by extreme conditions. Such emotion can then open the door to spirituality. Music is for me a privileged means of opening that path. Its hypnotic strength allows us to access inner powers, the limits of which are not known to us., but some aspects of which are then revealed. Music, when it touches us, conjures up this presence." (Thierry Lancino, about "Who is the Third?")