——. Li cumpoz, ed. Émile Mall. Strasbourg, 1873.
——. Le livre de Sibile by Philippe de Thaon, ed. Hugh Shields. London: Anglo-Norman Text
Society, 1979.
Legge, M.Dominica. Anglo-Norman Literature and Its Background. Oxford: Clarendon, 1963.
McCulloch, Florence. Mediaeval Latin and French Bestiaries. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1960.
Pickens, Rupert T. “The Literary Activity of Philippe de Thaün.” Romance Notes 12 (1970–
71):208–12.
Shields, Hugh. “Philippe de Thaon, auteur du Livre de Sibylle?” Romania 85 (1964):455–77.
——.“More Poems by Philippe de Thaon?” In Anglo-Norman Anniversary Essays, ed. Ian Short.
London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1993, pp. 337–59.
Studer, Paul, and Joan Evans. Anglo-Norman Lapidaries. Paris: Champion, 1924.
PHILIPPE DE VITRY
(1291–1361). Official of the French court under Charles IV, Philip VI, and John II;
bishop of Meaux from 1361; poet; and the most important composer of the early Ars
Nova. Philippe’s many services to the Valois included appointment as one of the nine
reformers-general of 1357. Although Philippe’s contributions to poetry and music have
been difficult to establish unequivocally due to the state of the sources, his authority and
reputation, extending into the 15th century, were enormous. As a young man, he probably
contributed to the new developments in Ars Nova notation (ca. 1315–20) and probably
taught the new techniques to others; he seems not to have written a theoretical treatise
himself. Philippe was possibly the inventor of the isorhythmic motet, and there is
evidence that he helped to establish the formes fixes as the preeminent musical-lyrical
forms of the 14th century. Guillaume de Machaut probably numbered him self among
Philippe’s musical pupils. Philippe’s most influential work of poetry was the Dit de
Franc Gontier, which in the 15th century elicited a companion work by Pierre d’Ailly
and a parody by François Villon.
Lawrence Earp
[See also: ARS NOVA; FAUVEL, LIVRES DE; FORMES FIXES; ISORHYTHMIC
MOTET; MUSIC THEORY]
Coville, Alfred. “Philippe de Vitri: notes biographiques.” Romania 59 (1933):520–47.
Leech-Wilkinson, Daniel. Compositional Techniques in the Four-Part Isorhythmic Motets of
Philippe de Vitry and His Contemporaries. 2 vols. New York: Garland, 1989.
Wathy, Andrew. “The Motets of Philippe de Vitry and the Fourteenth-Century Renaissance.” Early
Music History 12 (1993):119–50.
Wimsatt, James I. Chaucer and His French Contemporaries: Natural Music in the Fourteenth
Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991.
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