The publication by the Presses universitaires de Rennes of Des musiciens au service des églises (XVIIe et XVIIIe s.) highlights the extensive research undertaken on the musical establishments of cathedrals and collegiate churches. Held in advance of the 16th Muséfrem Network Meeting, this study day, organised in partnership with the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, will present these centres of employment and training — true breeding grounds for musicians — in the presence of the book’s contributors and the historian Georges Provost.
In France, before the Revolution, the musical establishments of cathedrals and collegiate churches employed professional musicians and served as training grounds for musicians of every kind. Since the early 2000s, the Muséfrem (Musiciens d'Église à l'époque moderne) research project has explored their methods of training, their geographical distribution, the course of their careers, their place in society, and the development of a typology of musical institutions. Based on a prosopographical approach and on exceptional archival sources that make it possible to study this professional community across the Kingdom of France, this rich and continually expanding research project draws on a database that is regularly supplemented with new biographies (9,800 to date) and studies of musical institutions (covering 70 départements), which makes it the leading online resource for the cultural life of the Ancien Régime.
This study day provides an opportunity to present several contributions published by the Presses universitaires de Rennes in a volume paying tribute to Sylvie Granger, co-founder of the project. Around ten contributors will present the results of their research, addressing the professional lives of musicians, their working conditions, the composition and circulation of the repertoire, their relationships with the secular world, and the distinctive careers of organists.
The early modern historian Georges Provost, the special guest of the event, will conclude with an overview of the new perspectives opened up by this research.
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STUDY DAY • RESEARCH
16th meeting of the Muséfrem Network: “Learning (through) singing: Choirboys in France in the Eighteenth Century”
Thu. 22 Oct. 2026
University of Artois, Arras
