DE VITRY, PHILIPPE. - Poet, composer, and music theorist, born at Vitry (Champagne) on 31 Oct. 1291 and died on 9 June 1361 at Meaux, the city of which he had been appointed bishop on 3 Jan. 1351 by Pope Clement VI.
Highly esteemed at the court of France (he was secretary to Carlo IV and subsequently to Filippo VI, “maistre des requestes,” “clericus,” and counsellor to Giovanni II) and at the papal court in Avignon (Giovanni XXII granted him various canonries and prebends), he corresponded with Petrarca, who called him “musicum” and regarded him as the only French poet of the age.
Of his treatises, the principal one is entitled Ars nova (written between 1316 and 1325, edited by C. H. de Coussemaker in his Scriptores [1874–76], III, pp. 13–22), in which he explains and advocates a new system of mensural notation, largely inspired by Italian theories (Marchetto, etc.), which was to remain virtually unchanged throughout the Renaissance.
Of his musical works, one motet (Tuba - In arboris) was published by H. Besseler in Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 7 (1925), p. 32 ff.