A researcher …
Jean-François Goudesenne has established himself on the French and international research scene, first as a medieval musicologist, research fellow at the Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes, following in the footsteps of Michel Huglo (1921-2012). A specialist in medieval manuscripts and the earliest notations, he is the author of four monographs and numerous articles in French and English (around fifty). He has brought a powerful new dimension to the critical approach to Gregorian chant through interdisciplinary studies (history of art, liturgy, philology, Byzantine and Oriental traditions, etc.). Director of the Musam collection at Brepols, he leads research programmes on the monasteries of Touraine and on the restoration of Syriac and Chaldean chant around 1900. He takes part in numerous international colloquia, mainly in Europe (Cantus Planus, IMS, etc.), and occasionally teaches at the Sorbonne and the University of Tours.
… and a musician too!
But he is also and above all a musician, currently director of a medieval music ensemble Ut Resonet melos and organiser of courses and masterclasses in medieval music and musicology in monasteries such as Conques, Ganagobie, Ligugé, Salagon or tourist sites (Chartres, Vézelay, Tournus) in partnership with specialist ensembles (Les Chantres du Thoronet, Organum or Les solistes de la musique byzantine).
One of Bernard HÉDIN’s first pupils, he won a gold medal in organ from the Lille Conservatoire in Jean BOYER’s class, a vermeil medal in harpsichord from Noëlle SPIETH’s class, and first prize in baroque chamber music with Ariane MAURETTE and David SIMPSON (1990-1992). He then turned to baroque chamber music as a continuo player, with a particular interest in French music and accompanying singers and chamber ensembles. After several courses in Lisieux and Barbaste with Pierre HANTAÏ, Elisabeth JOYÉ, Hugo REYNE and Philippe FOULON, he continued to perfect his skills with Sébastien WONNER and Jean-Luc ÉTIENNE at the Early Music Department of the Tours Conservatoire, specialising in keyboard music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These repertoires have led him into the field of organology and historical instrument reconstruction projects. He was a finalist in the Manchicourt competition (Béthune) on the Flemish organ at Nielles-les-Ardres in September 2022.
Musical extracts from the medieval music ensemble Ut Resonet melos
The Ambrosian hymn Deus creator is one of the oldest plainchant repertoires, dating back to the time when St. Ambrose urged his faithful to protect themselves from the city’s assailants by singing hymns, day and night, in droves. Thanks to the monk Dom Jeannin’s work on rhythm, this metrical interpretation has been proposed, based on a fairly common tone used in many hymns in the Gregorian and Ambrosian (Milanese) repertoires.
The responsory Ecce pulchra es is dedicated to the patron saint of the city of Agen, whose relics were stolen to form the treasure of the Abbey of Conques. Preserved in a mid-12th-century collection in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (nouv. acq. 443), it is scored in Aquitaine notation and is a rare example of a remarkable late-11th-century composition, also studied by Stanford University (Bissera Pentcheva) and Ensemble Organum (Marcel Pérès).
Performed by my group Ut resonet melos, recorded in Conques in 2019. The Nestorian antiphon transcribed by Dom Parisot at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries illustrates this program dedicated to the collecting and restoration work of French Benedictine monks in the East.
The singing of the fos ilaron (joyful light) for Vespers reflects my deep appreciation of Byzantine music and repertoires sung in Greek, which were insufficiently taken into account by Gregorian musicology from the mid-1950s onwards. A tribute to the approach of Marcel Pérès and Lycourgos Angelopoulos, who, with the Organum ensemble, have breathed new life into Western liturgical music in a considerably inventive and powerful way.
