Philippe de Vitry was a French prelate, music theorist, poet, and composer. He attended the Sorbonne in Paris and was ordained a deacon; held prebends in Cambrai, Clermont, St. Quentin, and elsewhere, and was canon of Soissons and Archbishop of Brie. From 1346 to 1350 he was employed by Duke Jean of Normandy, remaining in his service when the duke became king in 1350. Pope Clement VI appointed him Bishop of Meaux in 1351. Vitry has been most famous in music history for the Ars nova notandi (1322), a treatise on music attributed to him, which gave its name to the music of the entire era. Vitry was known in his lifetime as both a poet and a composer, although little poetry, and only a handful of motets, survive; Five of Vitry’s three-part motets have survived in the Roman de Fauvel; an additional nine can be found in the Ivrea Codex. He was widely acknowledged as the greatest musician of his day, and even Petrarch wrote a glowing tribute of him: “…he is the great philosopher and truth-seeker of our age.”
