Jacques Chailley
French musicologist and composer (1910–1999)
Jacques Chailley (24 March 1910 – 21 January 1999) was a French musicologist and composer.
Biography
Chailley's mother was the pianist Céliny Chailley-Richez (1884–1973), his father the cellist Marcel Chailley (1881–1936). As an adolescent, he was a boarder at the Fontgombault Abbey (Indre) where he learned to play the organ and learned about choir directing. At the age of 14, he composed a four-voice Domine non sum dignus.
He received a classical and musical training of high quality, studying harmony with Nadia Boulanger, counterpoint and fugue with Claude Delvincourt, musicology with Yvonne Rokseth who gave him insight into medieval music. At the Conservatoire de Paris, he followed Maurice Emmanuel's class of music history and studied music composition with Henri Büsser (himself a disciple of Charles Gounod). At the Sorbonne, he studied music history with André Pirro, with whom he presented his first musicological work in 1935 (DES, "Diplôme d'Études Supérieures"). He also took classes of conducting with Pierre Monteux, Willem Mengelberg and Bruno Walter in Amsterdam, while resident in the Descartes House (1935–1936). There, he also studied musicology with Albert Smijers.
Passionate about Medieval music for which he devoted much of his musicological activity, he founded in 1934 the choir Psalette Notre-Dame in order to revive it.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1677932. VIAF identifies the subject as 108744134. The Library of Congress control number is n79140942. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1910, 1999, 1884 and 1973.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jacques Chailley” 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.