Lesure, François (-Marie)

Lesure, François (-Marie), distinguished French music librarian, musicologist, and writer; b. Paris, May 23, 1923. He studied at the École des Chartres, the École Pratique des Hautes Études, and the Sorbonne, and musicology at the Paris Cons. A member of the music dept. at the Bibliothèque Nationale (from 1950), he was its chief curator (1970–88). From 1953 to 1967 he headed the Paris office (responsible for Series B) of the Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM), for which he himself éd. Recueils imprimés: XVJ^e-XVIIe siècles (Munich, 1960); Recueils imprimés: XVIII^e siècle (Munich, 1964; suppl. in Notes, March 1972, vol. XXVIII, pp. 397-418, and the two vols, of Écrits imprimés concernant la musique (Munich, 1971). He also was a prof, at the Free Univ. of Brussels (1965–77), ed. of the early music series known as Le Pupitre (from 1967), president of the Société Française de Musicologie (1971-74; 1988-91), and prof, at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (from 1973). He ed. such non-serial works as Anthologie de la chanson parisienne au XVI^e siècle (Monaco, 1953); the report of the 1954 Arras Conference, La Renaissance dans les provinces du Nord (Paris, 1956); P. Trichet’s Traité des instruments de musique (vers 1640) (Neuilly, 1957); six vols, of Chansons polyphoniques (with A.T. Merrit, Monaco, 1967-72; the first five vols, constitute the collected works of C. Janequin); a collected ed. of Debussy’s writings on music, Monsieur Croche et autres écrits (Paris, 1971; Eng. ed., 1977); ed. a Catalogue de l’oeuvre de Claude Debussy (Geneva, 1977); ed. the letters of Debussy for the period 1884-1918 (Paris, 1980; rev. ed., 1993); was ed.-in-chief of the complete works of Debussy (from 1986). His own publications include a Bibliographie des éditions d’Adrian Le Roy et Robert Ballard, 1551-1598 (with G. Thibault, Paris, 1955; suppl. in Revue de Musicologie, 1957); Musicians and Poets of the French Renaissance (N. Y., 1955); Mozart en France (Paris, 1956); Collection musicale A. Meyer (with N. Bridgman, Abbeville, 1961); Musica e società (Milan, 1966; Ger. tr., 1966, as Musik und Gesellschaft im Bild: Zeugnisse der Malerei aus sechs Jahrhunderten-, Eng. ed., 1968, as Music and Art in Society); Bibliographie des éditions musicales publiées par Estienne Roger et Michel-Charles Le Cene, Amsterdam, 1696-1743 (Paris, 1969); Musique et musiciens français du XVI^e siècle (Geneva, 1976, a reprinting in book form of 24 articles orig. publ. 1950-69); Claude Debussy avant ’Pelléas’ ou Les Années symbolistes (Paris, 1992). He contributed L’Opera classique français: 17^e et 18e siècles (Geneva, 1972) and Claude Debussy (Geneva, 1975) to the series Iconographie Musicale. For the Bibliothèque Nationale, he prepared a series of exhibition catalogs, most notably one on Berlioz (Paris, 1969).

Bibliography

J.-M. Fauquet, ed., Musiques, Signes, Images: Liber amicorum F. L. (Geneva, 1988).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire