François Lesure


François Lesure was a French librarian and musicologist.

Biography

François Lesure studied at the Sorbonne, the École nationale des chartes, the École pratique des hautes études and the Conservatoire de Paris. In 1950, he became curator in the music department of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, which he directed from 1970 to 1988. Between 1964 and 1977, he was appointed professor of musicology at the Université libre de Bruxelles. He succeeded Solange Corbin to the chair of musicology at the École pratique des Hautes Études in 1973.
François Lesure organized major exhibitions at the Bibliothèque nationale and the Opéra de Paris and at the Villa Médicis in Rome.
He is mainly remembered as a specialist in 16th-century music, music sociology, music bibliography and Debussy. He was president of the from 1971 to 1974 and from 1988 to 1991.
Between 1953 and 1967 he worked at the Central Secretariat of the RISM, a global project for the identification of musical sources. He has also edited several volumes in the RISM collections. Still in the publishing field, he directed the series Le Pupitre at Heugel, devoted to early music scores, and the series Domaine musical at Les Amateurs de Livres then at. He was also editor of Claude Debussy's "complete works". A volume of Festschriften was offered to him in 1988 upon his departure from the Bibliothèque Nationale, entitled Musiques, signes, images, which gathered contributions both international and from researchers or artists in various fields.

Main publications

16th century