Philippe de Vitry was a poet and musician, philosopher and intellectual. He was councilor to three kings and ambassador to the Papal court in Avignon. Musicologists now doubt that such a revolutionary treatise existed.
Philippe de Vitry was a poet and musician, philosopher and intellectual. He was councilor to three kings and ambassador to the Papal court in Avignon. Musicologists now doubt that such a revolutionary treatise existed.
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Philippe de Vitry was a poet and musician, philosopher and intellectual. He was councilor to three kings and ambassador to the Papal court in Avignon. Musicologists now doubt that such a revolutionary treatise existed.
Copyright:
Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
Philippe de Vitry Birth Oct 31, 1291 in Vitry, Champagne, France Death Jun 9, 1361 in Paris, France
Philippe de Vitry, poet and musician, philosopher and intellectual, councilor to
three kings, began his stellar career with a master of arts degree from the Sor- bonne. Pope John XXII conferred upon him the first of many ecclesiastical reven- ues in 1321. By this point, Vitry may have already been serving as a notary to the Royal Court; his documented service to French royalty spanned three reigns, Charles le Bel, Philippe VI, and Jean II. In 1346, Vitry accompanied Jean to war as a "companion in arms," and he served as an ambassador to the Papal court in Avignon starting in 1350. In that year, he was named Bishop of Meaux, a post he retained until his death in 1361. During his life, Vitry was commended by no less a writer than Francesco Petrarch as "the one true poet of France," and by numer- ous professional musicians as the "flower and jewel of singers"; he was said to have discovered the very means of composing music in his time. Philippe de Vitry has long been erroneously thought to have codified his new theories of music composition some time around 1320 in a revolutionary treatise called the Ars Nova, or "New Art" (setting its teaching in contrast to the composi- tional styles in the previous century). Musicologists now doubt that such a single work existed. Nevertheless, vestiges of his teachings on music have sur- vived in a number of smaller treatises and tracts by his pupils. His expansions of musical practice largely deal with rhythmic features: the codification of different mensurations (or musical time signatures), specifically duple time; the use of red notation to indicate new proportional rhythmic values; and the standardization of a new shorter note value, the minim. In each of these cases, it seems he influ- enced his peers ...