Jacques Berthier
French composer (1923-1994)
Jacques Berthier (27 June 1923 – 27 June 1994) was a French composer of liturgical music, best known for writing much of the music used at Taizé.
Biography
Berthier was born in Auxerre, Burgundy; both of his parents were musicians. His father Paul was the kapellmeister and organist at the Auxerre Cathedral and his mother Geneviève Parquin was a composer. Learning first from his parents, Berthier was trained in music at the École César Franck in Paris. While there, he was taught by, among others, Edouard Souberbielle and Guy de Lioncourt (whose daughter he married).
In 1955 Berthier was first asked to compose music for the Taizé Community, which was then just a monastic community of twenty brothers. Six years later he became organist at the Church of the Jesuits in Paris, Saint-Ignace, where he worked until his death. In 1975, Berthier was again asked to compose for Taizé, this time for chants to be sung by the increasing numbers of young people coming to worship there. Over nearly twenty years, Berthier built up a body of church music that has been utilized around the world.
He died at his home in Paris in 1994, and requested that none of his own music be used in his funeral at Saint-Sulpice.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Jacques Berthier” as french composer (1923-1994). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as french composer (1923-1994). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1232631. VIAF identifies the subject as 7386894. The Library of Congress control number is n85023911. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1923, 1994, 1955 and 1975.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jacques Berthier” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.