LAMBILLOTTE, LOUIS. – Jesuit, composer, and palaeographer of sacred music, born at Hamaide (Charlevoix) on 27 March 1769, died at Vaugirard (Paris) on 22 February 1855. For 30 years he was director of music and singing at various colleges of the Order (St-Acheul, Briga, Fribourg in Switzerland, Brugelette, Vaugirard), and wrote motets, sequences, Masses, oratorios, songs for the month of May and for feasts and academies, to words by his fellow Jesuits or taken from authors
Towards the end of his life he contributed greatly to the restoration of Gregorian chant, sparing neither research nor travel. In the monastery of St Gall he discovered a manuscript antiphoner, cod. 359 of the ninth century, which he published under the title Antiphonaire de St Grégoire (Brussels 1851). This was the first attempt to decipher the neumes of Gregorian melodies. This led him to conceive the plan for a new complete edition of the Gregorian chant books; but only a Graduode and a Vesperale, edited by P. Dufaux, were published posthumously (ibid. 1855–56). L. also composed works on theory: Clef des mélodies grégoriennes (ibid. 1851) and Esthétique. Théorie et pratique du chant grégorien (ibid. 1855). Although the times were not yet ripe for his tenacious efforts to restore sacred music, and although he himself was not always faithful to his theories in practice, he nevertheless deserves the credit for having opened the way for the movement and established it on solid and scientific foundations.