Tinctoris, Johannes

(ca. 1435-1511)

   Flemish music theorist and composer. A native of Nivelles near Brussels, in his youth he stud-ied both law and theology, earning a double doctorate in civil and canon law. He became a priest and a canon at Poperinghe and may have been a singer at Cambrai under Guillaume Dufay. In 1463 he was choirmaster at Orléans, but like many talented Flemish musicians, he moved to Italy and after about 1472 spent at least 15 years in the ser-vice of Ferrante of Aragon, king of Naples. Between 1484 and 1500 Tinctoris was attached to the papal chapel in Rome. The outstanding manual of counterpoint in the 15th century, Liber de arte contrapuncti /Book on the Art of Counterpoint (1475), was one of his 12 treatises on musical theory. In it he sharply criticized the dissonances in the mu-sic of the preceding half-century and laid down strict rules for intro-duction of dissonances. Another influential work was his dictionary of musical terms, Terminorum musicae diffinitorium (1495). Though he was important mainly for his writings on musical theory, four masses, two motets, and several chansons by him survive.