Centre for Itinerant Research of Medieval and Early Music 

CIRMA was created in 2001. The centre exists in the form of different research, pedagogical and diffusion programmes organised with various partners, wherever it is necessary and possible to do so. The objective is to renew in depth the historiography of music while including the music of the south and the east of the Mediterranean bassin in the same vein as European music.
CIRMA shares its offices with the Organum ensemble. Since June 2001 the ensemble has been in residence at the Abbey of Moissac, in the Tarn et Garonne, France, where it is fostered by a municipality that is striving to develop the strong potential this historical spot provides for art and research.
The scope of the fields of investigation - both chronological (music from antiquity to contemporary oral traditions) and geographical  (Western Europe and the Mediterranean bassin) - determines the make-up of each programme. The itinerant structure enables the different partners, in France and throughout the world, to pool their resources and work, simultaneously or phase by phase, on the elaboration of joint projects.
The multicultural nature of the various fields of study requires a physical presence in the locations which represent the cultures involved. The geographical areas particularly favoured  are western Europe, the Byzantine world and North Africa.

These activities are ordered around a basis of three themes :

• The circulation of musical languages and forms, both those revived from the past and those that have survived to the present day.
• The pedagogy and the methods of oral and written transmission.
• The conservation, restauration and evolution of the oral and written repertoires.

This new approach to our musical heritage takes into consideration all the phases of the discovery of these cultures of the past by the men of today, from the basic research involved to the material’s diffusion and pedagogy. The research programmes are conceived in such a way as to harmonise erudition with the existing realities of contemporary music. A relation of reciprocity is thus created between the traditions that have developed techniques of musical notation over several centuries and those that are today still embodied in a living tradition. 
During the course of the different research programmes, a reflection is developed which progressively builds a history of arts and thought shared in common by the various civilisations that have developed on both sides of the Mediterranean.