Chant Cistercien - Ensemble Organum, Marcel Pérès / harmonia mundi France Audio CD 1992 / HMC 901392

UPC 3149025050342

Ensemble Organum is a group performing early music, co-founded in 1982 by Marcel Pérès and based in France. Its members have changed, but have included at one time or another, Josep Cabré, Josep Benet, Gérard Lesne, Antoine Sicot, Malcolm Bothwell. They have often collaborated with Lycourgos Angelopoulos and are influenced by Orthodox music.

The group mainly focuses on the performance of music from the Middle Ages, including Beneventan, Old Roman, Gallican, Carolingian and Mozarabic chants. However, the repertoire includes renaissance polyphony as well as more recent works.

The ensemble was formerly based at Sénanque Abbey and Royaumont Abbey. Since 2001 it has shared facilities in the precinct of Moissac Abbey with the Centre itinérant de recherche sur les musiques anciennes (Centre for Itinerant Research of Medieval and Early Music). In addition to musical performance, the ensemble also works with musicologists and historians on musical research from this period.

Marcel Pérès (born 15 July 1956, Oran, Algeria) is a French musicologist, composer, choral director and singer, and the founder of the early music group Ensemble Organum. He is an authority on Gregorian and pre-Gregorian chant.

Pérès was born into an Algerian family of Spanish origin which was repatriated to France. He grew up in Nice, where he sang at the cathedral and was organist at the Anglican church. He trained in organ and composition at the Nice conservatoire, before continuing his studies in church music at the Royal School of Church Music and at English cathedrals. He worked at the Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal (Montreal early music studio) and for the National Film Board of Canada. In 1979 he returned to France where he studied medieval music under Michel Huglo at the École pratique des hautes études.

In 1984 Peres became director of ARIMM, the Atelier pour la Recherche sur l’Interprétation des Musiques Médiévales (or "Workshop for Research on the Performance of Medieval Music") with the support of the Fondation Royaumont, created by the Goüin family. In 1994 the Atelier became CERIMM, the Centre Européen pour la Recherche sur l'Interprétation des Musiques Médiévales (or "European Centre for Research on the Performance of Medieval Music").

In 2001 Pérès and his group Ensemble Organum moved to Moissac where he founded CIRMA, the Centre itinérant de recherche sur les musiques anciennes (or "Itinerant Centre for Research into Ancient Music").

He was musical director of Kaj Munk's play, Ordet, at the Festival d'Avignon in 2008.

Pérès' compositions include Le Livre des morts égyptiens ("The Egyptian Book of the Dead"), written in 1979, and Mysteria Apocalypsis.

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