Little is known of Le Jeune’s early life and education. As a young man he may have traveled to Venice and met the Flemish composer Adriaan Willaert, whose influence on his compositional technique is evident. In 1552 four chansons attributed to him were included in an anthology, and in 1564 his first solo volume, Dix pseaumes de David (“Ten Psalms of David,” in motet style), was published. By that time, Le Jeune, a Protestant, had secured the support and protection of several Huguenot nobles, which proved advantageous during the Wars of Religion.
Le Jeune was centrally involved with the Academy of Poetry and Music, established in Paris in 1570 by the poet Jean-Antoine de Baïf and the musician Joachim Thibault de Courville. Following theories espoused by Pierre de Ronsard, the group sought to revive poetic forms and metres of Classical antiquity. For his part, Le Jeune created settings of vers mesurés (Classical-inspired French poetry) in which long and short syllables were matched by long and short note values. Although much of the academy’s work was produced away from public view, some of Le Jeune’s airs, with texts by Baïf, were published in 1583.
In 1581 Le Jeune contributed music to the wedding of Anne, duc de Joyeuse, to Marguerite de Lorraine-Vaudémont, the half sister of the French queen consort, Louise. By the following year Le Jeune had become choirmaster to François, duc d’Anjou, the younger brother of King Henry III. During the siege of Paris in 1590, in which Roman Catholics successfully defended the city against forces loyal to the Protestant Henry IV, Le Jeune escaped and likely took refuge at La Rochelle, where his Dodecacorde, a volume of 12 psalm settings, was subsequently published (1598). As the Wars of Religion waned, however, he returned to the royal court as its chamber composer.
Most of Le Jeune’s work remained unseen until after his death. The majority of his hundreds of extant compositions are psalms, including a famous series of metrical settings from the Genevan Psalter that was published posthumously in 1601 and was widely reprinted through the 18th century. Le Jeune’s other works include airs, chansons (both sacred and secular), and canzonets.