ABSTRACT
The composer Leoninus is a pivotal figure in the history of Western art music, yet to the moment almost nothing is known of his life. Leoninus claims a special place in musical historiography on several counts. Until only one serious attempt has been made to find the name of the illusive Magister Leoninus among the records of twelfth-century Paris, that undertaken in the 1950s by Günter Birkner, a student of Jacques Handschin. But a Leoninus did flourish at the cathedral of Paris during the second half of the twelfth century, and he was renowned as a poet as well as a musician. Magister Leoninus had professed his vows to the community of St. Victor by 1187 and in 1196 was a witness to an agreement regarding the vicariate of St. Victor at Notre Dame.
