Pierre Aubry (musicologist)

Pierre Aubry (14 February 1874 – 31 August 1910) was a French musicologist (the first to use the term musicologie.^[1]) who specialized in secular monophony, musical palaeography and the music of the 13th century.

He is particularly known for applying the modal rhythms of Franconian theory to the repertoire trouvère and troubadour songs. The Alsatian scholar Johann-Baptist (later Jean) Beck claimed plagiarism and Aubry called for a trial, which resulted in a judgment in Beck's favor. Aubry's premature death by suicide was shrouded in rumors of a duel, Beck himself believing the fatal stab wound was an accident while practicing for combat.^[2]

Selected publications

• Les Proses d'Adam de Saint-Victor (1900).
• Lais et descorts français du xiiie siècle] (1901).
• Souvenir d’une mission d’études musicales en Arménie (1902)
• '‘Au Turkestan: note sur quelques habitudes musicales chez les Tadjiks et chez les Sartes’' (1905)
• Un “explicit” en musique du roman de Fauvel’' (1906)
• Le roman de Fauvel: reproduction photographique du manuscrit français 146 de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris (1907)
• Cent motets du XIIIe siècle, publiés d'après le manuscrit Ed.IV.6 de Bamberg (1908)
• Trouvères et troubadours] (1909, English translation 1914)
• Le chansonnier de l’Arsenal (1910, with A. Jeanroy)

Notes

1. Haines (2004), 155.
2. John Haines: The Footnote Quarrels of the Modal Theory: A Remarkable Episode in the Reception of Medieval Music Early Music History, Vol. 20 (2001), pp. 87-120

Sources

• Haines, John. "The 'Modal Theory', Fencing, and the Death of Pierre Aubry". Plainsong and Medieval Music 6 (1997): 143–50.
• Haines, John. Eight Centuries of Troubadours and Trouvères: The Changing Identity of Medieval Music. Musical Performance and Reception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

External links

• Pierre Aubry at world cat