Dimitrie Cantemir’s musical concerns have come into the attention of specialized literature since the XVIII century. Although the German language sources were the most important in promoting the image of the musician in this period, pages by local and foreign authors, dedicated to the artistic personality of the Romanian scholar, have also been included into some Parisian editions (Ch. Fonton, I. de Mouradja d’Ohsson). However, in the following century, the situation has clearly changed in favour of literary sources of French expression. The XIX century accounts are offered in lexicographical, musicological, historical works and memoirs signed by musicologists (A. É. Choron, Fr.-J.-M. Fayolle), composers, music critics (Fr. J. Fétis, A. Soubies), painters and architects (A.L. Castellan), musicographers and orientalists (Al. de Nuoal-Lahoussaye, G. A. Villoteau), particularly from France and Belgium. In the approaches of the above-mentioned authors, Cantemir’s name appears as theorist, inventor of Turkish music notation system, composer, tanbur performer. The degree of novelty and the density of the informational support provided by these sources varies from case to case, two of them are highlighted in particular: (a) the one due to Fr. J. Fétis through which the author announces the fate of the second treatise on music by D. Cantemir, An Introduction to Turkish Music (Introducere în muzica turcească), whose manuscript might be in Astrakhan, and (b) the one reported by A. Soubies, in which Cantemir’s activity is related to his contribution to religious music and to the deepening of old Slavic idioms -the language of the singing in the Eastern ecclesial cult, which is still being used in the liturgical environment of Slavic Orthodoxy. Looking through the exegeses of the musical activity undertaken by Cantemir, transposed in the light of the Francophone specialized literature of the XIX century, one can find that a large part of them has disseminated the image of a wellknown personality, closely attached to the Oriental sound theory and practice, which secured the musician’s visibility, credibility, prestige and, at the same time, European and worldwide recognition.