Prunières, Henry
Prunières, Henry
Prunières, Henry , eminent French musicologist; b. Paris, May 24, 1886; d. Nanterre, April 11, 1942. He studied music history with Rolland at the Sorbonne (1906–13), receiving his doctorat ès lettres from the Univ. of Paris in 1913 with the diss. L’Opéra italien en France avant huili (pubi. in Paris, 1913); also wrote a supplementary diss. in 1913, ha Ballet de cour en France avant Benserade et Lully, publ. in Paris in 1914. From 1909 to 1914, was an instructor at the École des Hautes Études Sociales in Paris; in 1920, founded the important journal La Revue Musicale, of which he was ed.-in-chief until 1939; was head of the French section of the ISCM. He was general editor of a complete ed. of Lully’s works (10 vols., Paris, 1930–39).
Writings
(all publ. in Paris): Lully (1910; 2nd ed., 1927); La Musique de la chambre et de l’écurie (1912); La Vie et l’oeuvre de Claudio Monteverdi (1924; Eng. tr., 1926; 2nd French ed., 1931); La Vie Bistre et libertine de Jean- Baptiste Lully (1929); Cavalli et l’opéra vénitien au XVIIe siècle (1931); Nouvelle histoire de la musique (2 vols., 1934, 1936; Eng. tr., 1943).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire