Active in Italy in the early 1630s, he probably made the acquaintance of his future patron, prince Johann Anton I of Eggenberg (1610–1649), then ambassador of the emperor Ferdinand III to Pope Urban VIII in Rome in 1638.
Gaultier is not identical to the Jesuit and scholar Pierre Gautruche (Latinised form: Petrus Galtruchius Aurelianensis, baptized on 4 August 1602 in the church of Saint-Paul, Orléans, died 1681 in Caen) who he was formerly taken to be.
Gaultier probably paid and sold the book, containing 105 pieces of music with six different new tunings (so called accords nouveaux), on his own.
Atypical of French lute music of that period, however, was his extensive use of hammer-ons and pull-offs, and of campanella technique, both of which betray the strong influence of Italian guitarists and theorbists.
): Oeuves de Pierre Gaultier (Paris: CNRS, Corpus des Luthistes Français, 1984).