[See also: BIBLE, CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION OF; HUGH OF SAINT-
VICTOR; PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE; RICHARD OF SAINT-
VICTOR]
THORONET, LE
. Founded in 1136 in the diocese of Fréjus, the Cistercian abbey of Le Thoronet (Var) is
with Sénanque and Silvacane one of the “three sisters of Provence.” Its austere
Romanesque church of Saint-Laurent (1160–90), similar to that at Sénanque, features
four apses at the east end. To the north, the trapezoidal cloister with its barrel-vaulted
galleries is constructed on three levels. Particularly noteworthy is the six-sided lavabo
(washing room). The Gothic chapter house surmounted by the monks’ dortoir, the tithe
barn, the cellar, the warming room, the armarium (book locker), and a house for
postulants (convers), complete the foundation. The refectory has been destroyed.
William W.Kibler/William W.Clark
[See also: CISTERCIAN ART AND ARCHITECTURE; SÉNANQUE;
SILVACANE]
Bérenguier, Raoul. L’abbaye du Thoronet. 5th ed. Paris: CNMHS, 1964.
Roustan, F. Monographie de l’abbaye du Thoronet. Toulouse, 1924.
TINCTORIS, JOHANNES
(ca.1435–1511). Composer, musician, and music theorist, Tinctoris was born in the
village of Braine-l’Alleud, near Nivelles in present-day Belgium. In 1460, he was briefly
in Cambrai, where he served as a petit vicaire under Guillaume Dufay. By 1463, and
probably earlier, he was a succentor at the cathedral of Orléans. In the later 1460s,
Tinctoris was apparently in Chartres, serving as instructor of the cathedral choirboys. He
spent much of his later career, from ca. 1472 onward, in the service of the Aragonese
court in Naples, as a singer and eventually first chaplain and adviser to Ferdinand I. It
was while in Aragonese service that he took a hand in editing and compiling the
“Mellon” chansonnier (Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
91), a central source of late 15th-century Burgundian chansons. The details of the last
twenty years of his life are largely unknown, although his death in 1511 is documented
by the transferral of Tinctoris’s prebend at the church of Sainte-Gertrude in Nivelles to
another man.
Nearly twenty of Tinctoris’s musical works survive, along with several additional
works that he composed as musical examples for his treatises. His Masses and motets
feature complicated counterpoint and occasional experimentation with very low voice
ranges; most of his secular pieces are chanson reworkings based on tenors from
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1726