Guillaume de Van (2 July 1906 in
Memphis
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– 2 July 1949 in
Amalfi
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) real name William Carrolle Devan, was a French musicologist and choral conductor of American origin. A student at Princeton University, he then traveled to Rome to train in
Gregorian chant
Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainsong, plainchant, a form of monophony, monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song in Latin (and occasionally Greek (language), Greek) of the Roman Catholic Church. Gregorian chant developed ma ...
. In the early 1930s, he became choir conductor, conducting the Armenian choir in Paris. In 1935, in collaboration with abbot
Ducaud-Bourget, he founded the vocal
ensemble
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''Les Paraphonistes de Saint-Jean des Matines''. With this ensemble he interpreted and recorded for the first time several secular and religious vocal works of the Middle Ages. Among these works, he recorded the world premiere of ''
Messe de Nostre Dame'' by
Guillaume de Machaut in 1936 of which he made one of the first complete transcriptions published by the
Corpus mensurabilis musicae
The ''Corpus mensurabilis musicae'' (CMM) is a collected print edition of most of the sacred and secular vocal music of the late medieval and Renaissance period in western music history, with an emphasis on the central Franco-Flemish and Italian re ...
in 1950. In 1942 he was appointed by the Vichy regime curator of the newly created , until 1944. In this capacity he collaborated with the Nazi musicologists of the '. After the Liberation of France, he was suspended from his duties on 24 August 1944.
Bibliography
* Sara Iglesias, ''Musicologie et Occupation : Science, musique et politique dans la France des « années noires »'',
on '' Le Monde diplomatique'' (March 216) chapter ''Un personnage-clé : Guillaume de Van, nouveau prince et « usurpateur » de la musicologie française''. 2014 éditions MSH.
References
External links
Guillaume de Van
on musicme.com
Guillaume de Van
on Discogs
{{DEFAULTSORT:Van, Guillaume de
20th-century French musicians
20th-century French musicologists
People from Memphis, Tennessee
1906 births
1949 deaths
American emigrants to France