Bernard Mouton’s introduction to music came via the flute at the age of seven. He subsequently studied both saxophone and violin. It was only later that he discovered the recorder, which he studied first with Mieke van Weddingen, then at the Brussels Conservatory in the class of Frédéric de Roos, and finally in Paris with Pierre Hamon. At the same time, he obtained a diploma in musicology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. These two complementary fields of study enabled him to discover musics of progressively earlier periods. 
For some years, he has been interested mainly in the medieval period and especially in the monodic music of the troubadours and trouvères (12th and 13th centuries). He has attended courses or masterclasses with musicians from the medieval ensembles Alla Francesca (France), Micrologus (Italy) and the Boston Camerata (USA). In 1998, along with the magician Sylvain Sluys, he devised a medieval musical magic show, Les ballades du temps jadis, which toured through spring and summer 1999 (notably at the Medieval Nights of Saint-Antoine l’Abbaye, France). He directed the ensemble Fin’Amor which specialised in interpreting the secular monodic repertoire of the 12th and 13th centuries. In 2000, with the singer Edith Saint-Mard, he founded the ensemble La Roza Enflorese. Since 2001 he has been artistic director of the Midis-Minimes Festival in Brussels. In 2004 he set up Musica Ficta, a specialist early music label under the aegis of the Pavane label, and is its artistic director.

July 2019