Born in Lausanne, Viret is a pianist and organist, graduated in classic literature from the University of Lausanne, habilitated for the teaching of music theory (Société suisse de pédagogie musicale), Jacques Viret perfected his studies in musicology at the Paris-Sorbonne University, with Jacques Chailley who conducted his Ph.D. thesis on gregorian chant (1981).

[1] 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.

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.

Explanation and commentary then restore its legitimate primacy to sound in the face of writing, and closely link the musical meaning to the human being in its threefold constitution of body, soul, spirit.

They restore, in a new form, the "musical science" of Pythagorean obedience cultivated in Ancient times and in the Middle Ages: highly rational on one side, in its mathematical slope; Irrationality of the other, in its sensitive, intuitive, even magical (ethos theory, derived from the primitive incantation).

It revalues the orality as a living vehicle of traditional practices and knowledge, bearing precious values: vital, human, spiritual (cf.