Philippe de Vitry | Biography

Philippe de Vitry, early humanist scholar, poet, composer, and prelate, was held in high regard by intellectuals and literary figures of his day. Gace de la Buigne wrote that Philippe "made better motets than any man." The anonymous author of Les règles de la seconde rhétorique (The Rules of the Second Rhetoric) asserts that Philippe "invented the way of composing motets, ballades, lais, and simple rondeaux, and in music invented the four prolations, red notes, and new proportions." Pierre Bersuire called him "an extraordinary lover of moral philosophy, history, and antiquity, and learned in all the mathematical disciplines." The Provençal mathematician Levi ben Gershon (Leo Hebraeus) referred to Philippe as "the pre-eminent magister of the science of music." Modern scholarship has credited the poet-composer with some of the most important innovations in musical style and notation. The passage of more than six hundred years, however, has obscured a good deal...
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