Vitry, Philippe de

Philippe de Vitry

1291–1361

Poet
Bishop
Royal advisor

The New Art.

Philippe de Vitry (1291–1361) was a poet and composer who taught at the University of Paris, held administrative positions at the French royal court as advisor to kings Charles IV, Philip VI, and John II, and in his later years was Bishop of Meaux. He was once credited with authorship of the treatise Ars Nova (New Art), which provided new techniques for writing sophisticated rhythms, paving the way for far more complex musical structures that were soon explored in all of the polyphonic forms, especially in motets. Although Philippe probably did not write the treatise, he was highly influential in the development and teaching of its techniques, and it is likely that he invented the isorhythmic motet and contributed to the dominance of the chanson forms in fourteenth-century French secular music. He was highly regarded as a composer, teacher, and poet during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Only a few of Philippe's compositions have survived, two of which are musical insertions in the poem Roman de Fauvel by Gervais de Bus and Chaillou de Pesstain.

sources

A. Colville, "Philippe de Vitry: Notes Biographiques," Histoire Littéraire de la France. Vol. 36 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1925): 520–547.

Ernest H. Saunders, "Philippe de Vitry," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Vol. 20. 2nd ed. Ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London and Washington, D.C.: Macmillan, 1980): 22–28.