Organised in partnership with the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, the 16th meeting of the Muséfrem Network devotes its study day to choirboys in France. Drawing on the data assembled by this research project on church musicians in the early modern period, it explores the role of maîtrises in the musical and intellectual education of young singers.
Since the earliest days of the Church in the West, pueri chori have sung to enhance the liturgy with their voices. In return, they received, within a maîtrise or psallette, an education combining musical and intellectual training that opened the way to an ecclesiastical career. Over time, career opportunities expanded to include intellectual and musical professions, including in the secular sphere.
During the early modern period, despite the development of elementary schools and colleges that broadened access to literacy and Latin, the maîtrises remained the only institutions providing instruction in singing and music, apart from private tutors. Almost every composer began as a choirboy and received, in this uniquely favourable environment, far more than the rudiments of musical practice and theory.
This year, the study day builds on the continued development of the Muséfrem database, whose public section already contains nearly 10,000 biographies of musicians, to present broader studies encompassing entire networks of maîtrises at regional and even national level, with the aim of providing an overall picture of the place of choirboys in eighteenth-century France.
Related event
STUDY DAY • RESEARCH
Des musiciens au service des églises (XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles)
Wed. 21 Oct. 2026 – 10.30 am–5 pm
Bibliothèque musicale La Grange-Fleuret, Paris
