The research and reflection of Jacques Viret refer essentially to the notion of tradition as defined by
René Guénon in the line of the
perennialism (or
Gnosis): Not as the preservation of a fixed legacy, more or less ancient, but as the manifestation, diversified according to cultures, epochs and disciplines, of a "sacred, universal and timeless truth", a fruitful source of inspiration and creativity, in perpetual becoming and renewal. For music,
Pythagoras remains, in this respect, a permanent reference. The series of
harmonics thus appears, as an audible expression of numbers and proportions, as an image of the cosmic order. The universal creative principle is symbolized by the
fundamental frequency in the har:monic order, by the
tonic of the
modes in the melodic order (all traditional music is of modal essence). In particular, the tonic
sol, "sun" in Latin, the central element of the
theological and
esoteric cryptogram that Jacques Viret discovered in 1978 in the notes of the
range (
ut,
ré,
mi, taken from the
hymn to Saint
John the Baptist Ut queant laxis) and of which Jacques Chailley completed the explanation. The official
liturgical chant of the Roman Catholic Church, the Gregorian chant is especially the expression par excellence of tradition for the music of the West. Jacques Viret studies it in this light. He highlights, upstream, the rooting of this corpus in the other musical traditions of the world, especially oriental (and, probably, the ancient
celtic music; Downstream, its importance as a breeding ground for European music, both scholarly and - in part -
folkloric. This truly traditional approach illuminates Latin liturgical chant in its true light and allows the rediscovering, as far as possible, of its authentic interpretation (cf
rhythm) before the year 1000, which is very different from the style instituted in the Nineteenth by the Benedictines of the
Abbaye Saint-Pierre de Solesmes. Nevertheless, it benefits from the careful study of
neumes by Dom and his pupils ("Gregorian semiotics", musical
palaeography). It is a comparativism tributary to
ethnomusicology, insofar as it relates to each other the writings of the Middle Ages (noted manuscripts, treaties) and the traditions currently alive. This approach is also illustrated by the work of Hungarian musicologist Benjámin Rajeczky, as well as by the interpretations of
Marcel Pérès. According to the same spirit, the series
Diaphonia, created by Jacques Viret in 2000 with the "À Cœur Joie" publishing house in Lyon, provides amateur choristers with a repertoire of medieval songs transcribed in modern
musical notation so as to restore all the finenesses of the original notations and add data which are not included therein and come from other sources. == An integral science of music ==