Conductor Philippe Herreweghe pioneered the performance of Bach's choral music on period instruments and remains renowned in the field. He is the leader of several connected ensembles that perform music from the late Renaissance to the contemporary era.

Herreweghe was born in Ghent, Belgium, on May 2, 1947. He concurrently studied medicine and psychiatry at the University of Ghent, in addition to studying piano with Marcel Gazelle at the Conservatory in Ghent. During that time, he founded the Collegium Vocale of Ghent (1969). Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt took notice of the young artist and promptly invited him and his newly organized ensemble to collaborate with them in a recording project that would document the entire catalog of Bach's cantatas. Continuing his education at the conservatory, Herreweghe studied the harpsichord with Johan Huys and organ with Gabriel Verschraegen.

Ambitious, to say the least, Herreweghe formed numerous ensembles that each respectively acted as a performance vehicle for specific genres and periods of composition, resulting in numerous recordings for the Harmonia Mundi label. His Ensemble Vocale Elysées specialized and concentrated on the work of Bach and his predecessors. The Ensemble La Chapelle Royale (founded with Philippe Beaussant in 1977) focused on music from the French Baroque, as well as vocal scores from the Classical and Romantic eras. The Ensemble Vocale Européen (founded 1989) concentrated on Renaissance polyphony, while the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées (founded 1991), an original instrument ensemble, performed literature from the Classical and Romantic periods. Herreweghe divides his time in thirds and spends one with early music, one with the Romantic repertoire, and the last third with contemporary compositions. In an interview with La Scena Musicale (November 1997), the conductor described his ensembles as a "poupée russe, you know, those Russian dolls that fit one inside the other." The core Baroque group is Collegium Vocale. For bigger works and French Baroque pieces, it may be enlarged as La Chapelle Royale. and for Classical and Romantic-era music, still more players are added to form the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées.

In addition to all his own groups, Herreweghe has guest conducted many prestigious ensembles, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the Berlin Philharmonic, and the Orchestra of St. Luke's in New York City, among others. Herreweghe assumed the position of music director of the Festival of Saintes in 1982. He began his long career with Harmonia Mundi in 1989, releasing an album of music by Henry Dumont. In the year 1992 alone, he released 23 albums.

The conductor, nominated for Musical Personality of the Year (1990), has received many more awards, including European Musician of the Year (1991), Cultural Ambassador of Flanders with his Collegium Chorale (1993), and the order of Officer of Arts and Letters (1994). Herreweghe assumed the post of music director of the Flanders Philharmonic Orchestra in 1997, and beginning in 2002, served as its principal conductor (it is now the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, and Herreweghe remains honorary conductor). From 2008 to 2013, he was the principal guest conductor of the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic. He has continued to record for Harmonia Mundi but has also issued albums on various smaller labels, including, especially in the 2010s, Phi and PentaTone Classics. The range of Romantic and contemporary music Herreweghe has conducted on recordings is perhaps greater than that of any other conductor associated with the early music movement and includes a complete cycle of Beethoven's symphonies, masses by Palestrina, Dvořák's Requiem mass, choral music by Stravinsky, and much more. On Harmonia Mundi, he and Collegium Vocale released an album of five-part madrigals by Carlo Gesualdo in 2021. ~ David Brensilver & James Manheim

La Chapelle Royale is one of a number of ensembles, vocal and instrumental, founded by the Belgian conductor and keyboard player Philippe Herreweghe. The group specializes in French music of the 17th and 18th centuries.

While Herreweghe was still a university student, he founded the Collegium Vocale of Ghent, one of the first groups dedicated to authentic performances of Baroque vocal and choral music. The Collegium became known for its concerts and recordings of German Baroque music, particularly the Bach cantatas. It was suggested to Herreweghe by Philippe Beaussant and Vincent Berthier de Lioncourt that Herreweghe should found a Paris-based group to devote the same sort of attention to the very different music of the French Baroque. They were associated with an academic organization called L'Association La Chapelle Royale, a group registered since 1901. Its name reflected its interest in music and musicians of the French Royal Chapel, which, under Louis XIV, had grown to a grand size and manner.

Herreweghe founded the musical ensemble La Chapelle Royale in 1977 and began performing vocal and instrumental music of the great composers of the French Baroque, including Lully, Lalande, Rameau, Couperin, and their contemporaries. However, it was with a Bach performance that La Chapelle Royale made its first big impression when, in 1980, it presented the first period-instrument performance of Bach's large-scale music in Paris.

It has become one of the world's leading ensemble dealing with the French Baroque repertory and has made over 60 compact discs for the Virgin Classics and Harmonia Mundi labels. It has traveled to most of the world's major classical music venues and appears regularly at the leading music festivals of the world.

La Chapelle Royale has extended its period of interest backward into the Renaissance era and forward into the Classical and even early Romantic ages of music. When performing in choral works, La Chapelle Royale's vocal members function as its choir. As such has added to acclaimed performances of music of the French grand siècle that of other eras, such as Mozart's Requiem, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis and Ninth Symphony, Berlioz's L'enfance du Christ, Schumann's Scenes from Faust, and Brahms' A German Requiem.