Lemaire (or Le Maire), Jean

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Lemaire (or Le Maire), Jean

Lemaire (or Le Maire), Jean, French musician; b. Chaumont-en-Bassigny, Haute-Marne, c. 1581; d. c. 1650. He is said to have proposed the adoption of a 7th solmisation syllable si (so asserted by Rousseau in his Dictionnaire de musique; za, according to Mersenne’s Harmonie universalle). However, the designation si seems to have been proposed even earlier, so the question of priority remains moot. Lemaire constructed a lute that he called the “Almerie” (anagram of Lemaire).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire