Article publié dans Esem Point 59 – 2024
On 18 July 2024, Bernard Lortat-Jacob, one of the most renowned and authoritative voices in ethnomusicology, a first-rate researcher and scholar, passed away at the age of 83. ESEM owes a great deal to Bernard, who, among other things, was one of the fourteen founding members of the ESEM in Strasbourg on September 4, 1982, and was entrusted with the role of chairing one of the sessions of the seminar dedicated to improvisation. http://esemmusic.
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It is impossible to summarise Bernard Lortat-Jacob’s work. It is diverse, wide-ranging and of great scientific in-depth. Drawing on his musical and ethnological training, Bernard began researching and recording in the 1960s for the Musée des Arts et traditions populaires.
In 1977, he started teaching at Paris X-Nanterre. In 1984, he was on the Patrimoine ethnologique commission. That same year, he founded the Société française d’ethnomusicologie and was its president from 1985 to 1992 and again from 2005 to 2006. He was also a research director at the CNRS and director of the Laboratoire d’ethnomusicologie [CNRS] du Musée de l’Homme from 1990 to 2003.
His rigorous research began with short journeys to various French regions, including Aubrac, Berry, Île d’Yeu, and Corsica. From 1969 to 1981, he undertook approximately two months of research per year in the Berber communities of Morocco, specifically in the High and Middle
Atlas. Since the late 1970s onwards, he conducted in-depth study of multipart singing in various villages across central and northern Sardinia. In parallel, between 1980 and 1998, Bernard conducted research in Romania, Transylvania and the Pays de l’Oach in collaboration with Jacques Bouët and Speranta Raculescu. This research focused on improvisation between musicians with specialized skills in festive settings.
Subsequently, in 2002, he conducted research in southern Albania. From 1987 to 2008, Bernard Lortat-Jacob was director of the doctoral programme in ethnomusicology at the University of Paris X-Nanterre-La Défense. He has published extensively on a range of topics in general anthropology and musicology, contributing to interdisciplinary dialogue with fields such as acoustics, linguistics and music cognitivism.
It is clear that Sardinia was also Bernard’s a favorite field of activity for Bernard on a personal level, in terms of his relations with singers and the local people. In this regard, it is noteworthy that he opted to be interred in Castelsardo, where he conducted an extensive investigation into
the multipart practices of the local Confraternity. His findings illustrate how the act of singing with multiple voices fosters a profound interpersonal connection, imparting a quality of tangible presence within the musical experience. To find out more about Bernard Lortat-Jacob’s themes, methodological approaches and scientific production, visit the blog https://www.lortajablog.fr .
(Ignazio Macchiarella)