Marcel Pérès has always sought to understand why and how men have created the art of music. After studying organ and composition at the Nice conservatory, Marcel Pérès continued his education in Great Britain and Canada. Returning to Europe in 1979, he specialized in medieval music and founded the Ensemble Organum in 1982 with which he undertook a methodical exploration of medieval liturgical repertoires. He has made some 50 recordings.
Marcel Pérès created in 1984 at the Royaumont Foundation a research program on the interpretation of medieval music, which became the CERIMM (European Centre for Research on the Interpretation of Medieval Music) of which he was director until 1999.
In 2001, he founded the CIRMA (Centre Itinérant de Recherche sur les Musiques Anciennes) at the former Moissac Abbey, to highlight, through music, the circulation of people, their thoughts and their know-how over the centuries, and to develop complementary approaches between living traditions, musical archaeology and the sciences of memory.
Marcel Pérès is also a composer and has created some thirty works among which: Mysteria Apocalypsis in 2000, Contemplation – musical paraphrase of the Book of the Dead of the ancient Egyptians – recorded in 2008; the music of the play Ordet by Kaj Munk, premiered at the Avignon Festival in 2008, Missa ex tempore premiered in Katowice on 16 May 2015 for the inauguration of the new auditorium of the Polish Radio, Commissioned by the Camerata Silesia and Mysteria Apocalypsis II for choir and orchestra created in December 2019 in Chorzów and Katowice, commissioned by the Schola Minorum Chosoviensis and the Orkiestra Musyki Novej. Since 2017, Marcel Pérès has composed each year for the Diagonales d’Été de Moissac a part of a monumental mass dedicated to Saint Jacques and the mystery of the Transfiguration and recently composed a work for choir, piano and dance, Le Crépuscule Transfiguré, created at the cloister of Moissac on July 24, 2022 at 19:19.
Marcel Pérès’ international action was recognised in 1990 by the award of the Léonard de Vinci Prize for International Cultural Relations by the French Secretariat of State. The French Ministry of Culture awarded him the distinction of Chevalier in 1996, and then, in 2013, he was elevated to the rank of Officer of the Order of the Arts and Letters. He is also the godfather of the bell “Marcel”, built in 2012 and blessed on February 2, 2013 on the occasion of the 850 years anniversary of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. In 2014, he received the prestigious award of the Axion estin Foundation for his work on cultural interactions between the Byzantine East and the Latin West during the first millennium. He is also an honorary citizen of the city of Jaroslaw in Poland, and a corresponding member of the culture commission of the Conference of Bishops of France.
