Editing Nicolas Ruwet (section)

==Life and career==
Ruwet was born in [[Blegny|Saive]], [[Belgium]] on 31 December 1932.<ref name="Grove"/> In his youth he studied [[music]]: discovering the then little-known music of [[Arnold Schoenberg]] and seeking a career as a composer.{{sfn|Aroui|Zribi-Hertz|2002|p=109}} He initially studied Romance [[philology]] at the [[University of Liège]].<ref name="Grove"/> As he turned towards linguistics, he studied from 1959 onwards with [[Émile Benveniste]], [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]], and [[André Martinet]] in Paris.{{sfn|Aroui|Zribi-Hertz|2002|p=109}} Later, he studied with [[Noam Chomsky]] and [[Roman Jakobson]], both influences, at the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]].<ref name="Linguist"/>

Ruwet is best known for his work as a linguist and critic, but he was also a significant figure in musical analysis. He attempted to make his analyses completely objective by not making any ''[[A priori and a posteriori|a priori]]'' assumptions about how the music worked, instead breaking the piece down into small parts and seeing how those parts related to each other, thus discovering the [[syntax]] of the piece without reference to any external sources or norms. His work in this field constitutes a kind of musical [[semiology]] and his analytical methods were later named [[paradigmatic analysis]].<ref name="Linguist"/>{{sfn|Aroui|Zribi-Hertz|2002|pp=109–110}}

''[[Grove Music Online]]'' notes that "Though not primarily a musicologist, he has been a fundamental thinker in the field of the [[Semiotics of music]]."<ref name="Grove"/> Some of his [[musical analyses]] were published along with other works in ''{{ill|Langage, musique, poésie|fr}}'' [''Language, Music, Poetry''] (1972).<ref name="Grove"/> Among his students was the musicologist [[Jean-Jacques Nattiez]], himself a seminal music semiotician.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Dunsby |first=Jonathan |author-link=Jonathan Dunsby |year=2001 |encyclopedia=[[Grove Music Online]] |title=Nattiez, Jean-Jacques |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |location=Oxford |doi=10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.19619 |url-access=subscription |url=https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000019619 }} {{Grove Music subscription}}</ref>

Ruwet died at the age 68 on November 14, 2001.{{sfn|Aroui|Zribi-Hertz|2002|p=109}}