DE VITRY, PHILIPPE. - Poet, composer and music theorist, b. at Vitry (Champagne) on 31 Oct. 1291 and d. 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 Charles IV and then to Philip VI, "maistre des requestes", "clericus" and counsellor to John II) and at the papal court in Avignon (John XXII conferred on him various canonries and prebends), he corresponded with Petrarch, who called him "musicum" and considered him the only French poet of the period.

Of his treatises the principal one is that 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 illustrates and advocates a new system of mensural notation that is inspired in large part by Italian theories (Marchetto, etc.) and would remain 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.

Bibliography2 works

BIBL.: A. Machabey, Notice sur Ph. de V., in Revue musicale, 10 (1929), pp. 20-39; A. Coville, Ph. de V., Notes biographiques, in Romania, 62 (1933), pp. 520-47.

Luisa Cervelli

@incollection{ec4_de_vitry_philippe, author = {Cervelli, Luisa}, title = {De Vitry, philippe}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {IV}, pages = {1509}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1950}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/de-vitry-philippe} }

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De Vitry, Philippe

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