Étienne Loulié

Étienne Loulié, pronounced [e.tjɛn lu.lje], (1654 – 16 July 1702) was a musician, pedagogue and musical theorist.

Born into a family of Parisian sword-finishers, Loulié learned both musical practice and musical theory as a choir boy at the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris, under the learned maître de musique René Ouvrard. In 1673 Loulié left the Chapel and entered the service of Marie de Lorraine, duchesse de Guise, as an instrumentalist (harpsichord, and organ, viol, recorder and perhaps transverse flute as well), performing chiefly in her household ensemble. From 1673 to late 1687, he therefore performed many of the compositions of Marc-Antoine Charpentier, the Guises' household composer. During the late 1680s, Loulié became involved in musical pedagogy and wrote a series of coordinated method books for music teachers. He is credited with introducing the six-fold system of meter classification still taught today. During these same years, he formed a lifelong friendship with Sébastien de Brossard, who became a famed collector of musical scores and preserved Louliè's papers by including them in his donation to the Royal Library (today, the Bibliothèque nationale de France).

The Duchesse de Guise died in 1688. From that date until 1691, Loulié collaborated with mathematician Joseph Sauveur to prepare a course of study for Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, at the time known as the "Duke of Chartres."

One of the few musicians of the day who knew thoroughly both the practice and the theory of music, Loulié worked with Sauveur (circa 1693-1699) under the aegis of the French Academy of Sciences, studying acoustics and working out a "new system" of tuning and musical notation. The collaborative venture ended when Loulié and the musicians working with him became exasperated with the minute units upon which Sauveur based his system and which, the musicians insisted, could neither be heard nor replicated by even the sharpest human ear and the best-trained voice.

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