PHILIPPE DE VITRY. - Poet, composer, and music theorist, born at Vitry (Champagne) on 31 Oct 1291 and died on 9 June 1361 at Meaux, a city of which he had been named bishop on 3 Jan 1351 by Pope Clement VI.
Highly esteemed at the French court (he served as secretary to Charles IV and later to Philip VI, as “maître des requêtes,” “clericus,” and counsellor to John II) and at the papal court in Avignon (John XXII granted him various canonries and prebends), he corresponded with Petrarch, who called him “musicum” and regarded him as the only French poet of his time.
His principal treatise is the one 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 expounds and advocates a new system of mensural notation largely inspired by Italian theories (Marchetto, etc.) and which remained virtually unchanged throughout the Renaissance.
Of his musical works, a motet (*Tuba – In arboris*) was published by H. Besseler in *Archiv für Musikwissenschaft*, 7 (1925), p. 32 ff.