ABOUT THE REQUIEM BY THIERRY LANCINO

The Requiem is not a work written for an occasion, nor is the composer a mere hired hand. Would the composer's hair show more shades of gray, it could be considered his life's achievement, a central work whose presence can be intuited in previous and future compositions, and particularly in the planned opera inspired by Hermann Broch, The Death of Virgil. This work is the fruit of a long meditation, of unforeseen encounters, and of marvels that presented themselves to Thierry Lancino during a Mediterranean journey: "Maupassant's account of his trip to Sicily had taken me to the Capuchin monastery in Palermo, with its morbid catacombs. Later, Virgil's tomb on the Posillipo hillside in Naples was a source of deep emotion. I did not know then that, not far away, in Cumae, where the mythic Sibyl had her cave, she who was to become the central figure in my Requiem." The Sibyl, an uncommon prophet, announced, rather than the birth of Christ (Virgil, IVth Eclogue), his return on Judgment Day: in the XIth century, some liturgical texts already linked her to Jeremiah, to Daniel and to David, a procession of prophets that also included Virgil, whose specter was thus to visit this Requiem as it had visited the opera that was left unfinished.

Thierry Lancino understood gradually that the Latin sources of the requiem invited a dialogue between the Sibyl and liturgy: "At that point my project took an altogether different turn. I realized that there was a pagan presence in the liturgical text, 'Dies Irae … teste David cum Sibylla'. – Day of wrath … as announced by David and the Sibyl. From then on I was convinced that an original libretto had to be written for this work…"

Thierry Lancino immediately thought of Pascal Quignard for the libretto: one encounter was sufficient for them to understand each other, especially regarding the balance of newly written text and traditional liturgy.

The collaboration ultimately demanded neither compromise, nor long discussions on the manner in which words and music should come together. And no sooner was the understanding confirmed that the composer's mind was set ablaze: "I was in a state of shock for about five weeks, and tried to write down as many musical sketches as was possible, for indeed I was overwhelmed by the visions that presented themselves to me. I then started the composition work, which lasted more than two years with little interruption. Pascal Quignard was admirable in granting me total freedom, something for which I am very grateful to him." Only one certainty accompanied him, that the fusion of poetry and music should confer coherence to the work on a third level.

What the composer particularly appreciated in the author was "his remarkable knowledge of the Antiquity, the poetry and evocative power of his writings, and first and foremost his deep meditation on death." During the summer of 2005, Thierry Lancino described to Pascal Quignard how he envisioned "a requiem in which the Cumae Sibyl would partake as a counterweight to the liturgical rite. Her voice would guide us into the Netherworld. Of course Virgil/Aeneas, Dante/Virgil. The Sibyl's cruel death instills deep dread in me and calls to mind the progressive and inescapable vanishing of our civilization. The Sibyl has guided me somewhat before, notably in the lines of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, a poem that became a powerful source of inspiration for this project. So has a quote from Petronius' Satiricon: "Nam Sibyllamquidem Cumis ego ipse oculismeisvidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illipueri dicerent Sibylla titheleis? Respondebatilla Apothanein thelô! - I want to die! – The Sibyl is now leading me to you."

Truly "haunted" by the Requiem, Pascal Quignard then imagined the face-to-face between David and the Sibyl, in a poem contemplating death's most frightening features as well as its appeasing virtues, a poem in which annihilation blended with the prospects of eternal life. "The extraordinary idea that dominates this requiem and makes it so profoundly different from all others precisely consists in leaving in coexistence - and without choosing one over the other – a desire for annihilation and a desire for eternity." The composer wished to preserve this dialectics and synergy as the source of a powerful dynamics that he must develop to paroxystic heights: "The composition is progressing. Step by step. Grain by grain. And the music will not choose. (…) Echoes of ancient rites and sacred polyphony will find a meeting point, a point of opposition, a point of possible full realization. Spectacular passages will be heard alongside moments of pure contemplation. The Sibyl will guide us into the Netherworld, much like Virgil the pagan guided Dante through his initiatory journey. There thus will be an alternation, but beyond, the two worlds will communicate and partake in the same polyphony. The roughness of one will be polished by the other; the sweetness of the other will be corrupted."

"I now know that all of King David's responses will be in Latin. I chose not to use Hebrew because a king in Jewish Antiquity would never have perceived the world as a Christian prophet – which is what he is in the liturgy of the defuncts. (…) I do need a pagan Sibyl who constantly disrupts Christian liturgy in order to leave the latter, if I may say, on an equally passionate footing. I do not want to have to choose between King David and the Cumae Sibyl. I want to leave the two desires face to face. In my conception the Requiem must not sort out sufferings. It does not choose either between requiescat, requiescant, peace; It does not choose between gestures; it does not choose between the languages that preceded us and that founded our language, it does not choose between figures; it does not select among cries of pain or joy. […] It cannot choose any more than I can choose. It leaves face to face."
(Pascal Quignard to Thierry Lancino, Monday 26 December, 2005)

Two characters cross paths, with obviously opposed, but complementary visions. Duality: David responds to the sibyl, Latin responds to Greek. On one hand psalms, on the other excerpts from sibylline oracles, some rare fragments that are considered authentic and which date back to the second century before Jesus-Christ – from a ritual for Demeter – cited by Phlegon of Tralles in his On Marvels. Languages from another era, confronted to the contemporary voice of the French language.

Musical duality also, since the mezzo-soprano responds to the choir and to other soloists, while the orchestra places itself "at the service of these two visions. Linking one to the other. Or opposing them." If some rhythmic patterns bring to mind the medieval technique of the hocket, if one can recognize, through reminiscences, the traditional theme of the Dies Irae, or if one can intuit the presence of David in the harp accompaniments, the listener will be even more sensitive to the manner in which melodic lines appear at times to rise to heaven, and at other times to be condemned to staying on earth, to which they are "attracted by some irresistible, telluric magnetism." (Thierry Lancino) "I want to die" cries the Sibyl in a long phrase ascending towards a high F note. When dread overcomes hope, chromatic descending lines become prevalent (Dies Irae), unless the choir's increasingly insistent calls come crashing into a momentous, helpless octave leap, or unless all musical motions become superimposed and blend into a great whirl during the Mors Stupebit. In addition to the two characters, a human figure (soprano) and "David's warrior extension" (bass) are heard: this is something quite unusual in a requiem. After a brief duet between David and the Sibyl (Agnus Dei) for a sole moment of junction, we may wonder if we are even listening to a mass in the prime sense of the word. To an opera perhaps, if one looks at the initial stage directions: "The Sibyl's figure appears. She gets into her trance. She is gyrating and starts to sing her song." To an oratorio or, in Thierry Lancino's words, to "some epic fresco or sacred ceremony" that includes a theatrical dimension well beyond any stage manifestation, resembling cults that were necessarily infused with a dramatic dimension. Suffice it to consider the mere first measures of this composition in thirteen sections, a procession punctuated with thirteen hits on the bass drum, on the tubular bells, on the gong and the Tibetan bowl. Thirteen calls that invoke the Sibyl, the thirteen prophet. A prologue during which she narrates her long story. Sistre, waterphone, clinking of seashells, balafon, all echoes of the murmurs of an imagined, ancient Mediterranean sea.

Profane or sacred, the Requiem sometimes appears akin to some pagan ceremony. Dedicated to Selam, a three-year-old Australopithecus girl, fossilized in Ethiopia for the past three million years, it ultimately invites the listener to attempt comprehending the notion of departure. "The Approach of death is a contradictory process: panic and peace", writes Pascal Quignard in his notes attached to the Requiem; in the Amharic language, "selam" signifies peace. Resistance, fight, attempt at negotiation would then be necessary stages towards the acceptance of death. A journey in five steps, like the five stages of grief described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in terminally ill patients, like the five parts in the suite inspired by The Death of Virgil. With the offertory as the "keystone to the whole work: through the depth of its meditation. In the liturgy, it refers to the sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham. Animal sacrifice is substituted to human sacrifice at the last moment by effect of the goodness of God. Abraham, as a reward for his blind obedience, will beget an endless lineage. During the Offertory, the Sibyl, condemned to remain without descent, asks that a sacrifice be arranged of three times nine bulls for Demeter (fragments of the Sibyl's oracle reputed original). Imploring the gods to let her die (Pascal Quignard's text), she concludes that the gods she is addressing are made of stone, and that the ancient gods are dead. That she outlived them."

Through this musical experiment, Thierry Lancino may have tried to understand also. Not only to grasp the idea of death, but also to touch it in a concrete manner, to materialize "an asymptote common to people of faith, who seem to be able to reach that land and set foot on it. It is while writing the Offertory that I had a form of revelation on the deep meaning of this Requiem: The Sibyl cannot die because her gods died before her. It appeared to me that one cannot die without the help of a deity. That one is – like the Sibyl – condemned to wander endlessly. This deity, she envisions it (Virgil, IVth Eclogue) to the point of announcing the coming of a new god, Christ for Christians. Which explains her presence in Christianity."

François-Gildas TUAL (traduction: Jean-Louis Pautrot)

1 I even saw, saw with my own eyes, the Cumae Sibyl in suspension in a flask, and when children would ask her, in Greek, Sibyl what do you wish for? The poor soul would reply, in Greek as well, I want to die.