Joachim Thibault de Courville

In 1570 the two, with the backing of the king, founded the Académie de Poésie et de Musique, inviting a few other professional musicians and aristocratic patrons; however they maintained a high level of secrecy in their undertaking, which was intended to reform not only music, but mankind. Baïf and Courville, reading accounts of the ethical and moral effects of such dramatic poetry in Ancient Greece, believed that hearers of their new musique mesurée, could be moved to become virtuous. The members of the Académie planned to perform their music widely once they had perfected their method. The Académie disbanded after several years, probably under the stress of the religious violence which tore France apart during the last third of the 16th century, for both Protestants and Catholics were members, and King Henri III (who assumed the throne on the death of Charles IX in 1574) wanted to change the character of the Académie from a musical to a philosophical institution. No music by Courville has directly survived: he maintained secrecy as ordered by the Académie, and published none of his own music. However some of the chansons published by others, for example Fabrice Caietain and Claude Le Jeune, are presumed to contain either passages by Courville or stylistic copies. Courville's lyre was a unique instrument, consisting of eleven strings, and often being played with a bow. It was modeled after a supposed Ancient Greek instrument.

• Frank Dobbins: "Joachim Thibault de Courville", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed July 12, 2006), (subscription access) • Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. • Jeanice Brooks, Courtly Song in Late Sixteenth-Century France. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2000.