Introduction

Biography

At age 15, Lam­bil­lotte be­came or­gan­ist at Char­le­roi, and lat­er at Di­nan-sur-Meuse. In 1820, he be­came choir­mas­ter and or­gan­ist of the Je­su­it Col­lege of Saint-Ach­eul, Am­iens.

He stu­died the class­ics, and in Au­gust, 1825, en­tered the So­ci­ety of Je­sus.

The 30 years of his Je­su­it life were spent suc­cess­ive­ly in the col­leg­es of Saint-Ach­eul, Fri­bourg, Es­ta­vay­er, Bru­gel­ette and Vau­gir­ard. While oc­cu­pied in teach­ing and di­rect­ing mu­sic, he gave him­self up more en­tire­ly to com­po­si­tion, with a view to en­hance both the re­li­gious ce­re­mo­nies and the aca­de­mic en­ter­tain­ments in those new­ly found­ed col­leg­es.

Works

His pow­ers of com­po­si­tion were checked by the lim­it­ed abi­li­ty of his stu­dent per­form­ers. Nev­er­the­less, he pro­vid­ed new mu­sic for al­most ev­ery oc­ca­sion, pro­duc­ing can­ti­cles, a large num­ber of mo­tets, short ora­to­ri­os, mass­es and se­cu­lar can­ta­tas, most­ly for four-part chorus and or­ches­tra. This mu­sic be­came po­pu­lar, es­pe­cial­ly in edu­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions.

Late in life, Lam­bil­lotte re­gret­ted hav­ing pub­lished writ­ten im­pro­vi­sa­tions with­out tak­ing time to re­vise them.

After his death, a re­vi­sion of the great­er part of them was made and pub­lished (Pa­ris, 1870) by his pu­pil, Ca­mille de la Croix, and by Lou­is Des­sane, or­gan­ist of St. Sul­pice, Pa­ris, and lat­er of St. Fran­cis Xa­vier, New York.