Leclair: (1) Jean-Marie Leclair

(1) Jean-Marie Leclair

[lan] (b Lyons, 10 May 1697; d Paris, 22 Oct 1764). Composer, violinist and dancer. He is
considered the founder of the French violin school.

1. Life.
Before his 19th year, Leclair mastered violin playing, dancing and lacemaking. He was then
listed among the dancers at the Lyons opera, together with Marie-Rose Casthagni whom he
married on 9 November 1716. He may also have been active as a dancer and violinist in Rouen,
where according to Gerber his patron was Mme Mezangre (La Laurencie however doubted the
Rouen connection).
Leclair was in Turin in 1722, where he may have been drawn by employment at royal wedding
festivities; he was evidently active there as a ballet-master, though he did not hold an official
position. Possibly he received violin lessons from G.B. Somis.
Going to Paris in 1723, Leclair came under the patronage of one of the richest men in France,
Joseph Bonnier, while he prepared his op.1 for publication. These sonatas were recognized for
their originality and, according to one contemporary, they appeared at first a kind of algebra
capable of rebuffing the most courageous musicians. Another wrote: Le Clair est le premier qui
sans imiter rien, Cra du beau, du neuf, qu'il peut dire le sien (Le Clair is the first person who,
without imitating anything, created beautiful and new things, which he could call his own).
In June 1726 J.J. Quantz visited Turin where, he noted in his diary, Leclair was studying with
Somis. Leclair provided ballets (now lost) as postludes to two operas at the Teatro Regio
Ducale, Turin, in 1727. In Paris the following year he published a second book of violin sonatas
and made his dbut with 12 appearances at the Concert Spirituel, where he was vigorously
applauded in performances of his own sonatas and concertos. He also travelled to London,
where John Walsh issued a book of his sonatas, and to Kassel, where he performed at court
with Pietro Locatelli. This performance may have been an enactment of the battle between the
French and Italian styles which so interested writers of the period. J.W. Lustig recounted that
Leclair played like an angel and Locatelli like a devil; that Leclair employed extreme rhythmic
freedom and moved his listeners by the beauty of his tone, while Locatelli astonished his
listeners with a deliberately scratchy tone and left-hand pyrotechnics. Leclair apparently worked
with Locatelli at this time, perhaps returning to Amsterdam with him; 18th-century commentators
noted Locatelli's influence in the sonatas of op.5. Another of his teachers at this period was the
Parisian composer, harpsichordist and conductor Andr Chron, to whom he subsequently
dedicated his op.7.

Leclair's first wife had died childless, and on 8 September 1730 he married Louise Roussel, who
engraved his op.2 and all his subsequent works. Their only child, Louise, also an engraver,
married the painter Louis Quenet.
Numerous performances and publications in Paris led to official recognition when late in 1733
Leclair was appointed by Louis XV ordinaire de la musique du roi. He responded by dedicating
to the king his third book of violin sonatas, of which the sixth in C minor (later dubbed Le
tombeau) is his best-known composition. In his new capacity Leclair associated with some of
the best French musicians of the day, including his friend the viol player Antoine Forqueray and
his rival Pierre Guignon. The court favoured older French music Lully for the chamber, Lalande
for the chapel but Leclair was allowed at least once to perform one of his concertos for the
queen's entourage, when his delicate and brilliant playing was greatly applauded. This
employment ended in 1737 when Leclair and Guignon quarrelled over the directorship of the
king's orchestra. The two agreed to alternate monthly, with Leclair leading off; but after the first
month he resigned and left Paris rather than sit second to Guignon. [not available online]
Leclair next accepted an invitation to the court of Orange in the Netherlands from Anne,
Princess of Orange and daughter of George II of England. Princess Anne had become an
accomplished harpsichordist under Handel's tutelage; the mutual esteem shared by Leclair and
the princess may be surmised from his dedication to her of his op.9 and her decorating him with
the Croix Nerlandaise du Lion. From 1738 to 1743 Leclair spent three months each year at the
court. After July 1740 the remaining nine months were spent at The Hague, where he had
become maestro di cappella to a wealthy commoner, Franois Du Liz, who maintained an
establishment of 20 musicians. This arrangement ended with Du Liz's bankruptcy in January
1743; Leclair returned to Paris to publish his fourth and final book of violin sonatas. In 1744 he
spent some time in Chambry playing for the Spanish Prince Don Philippe, to whom he
subsequently dedicated op.10. He then returned to Paris, and remained there, apart from an
occasional visit to Lyons.
Leclair spent the next few years in semi-retirement, on a pension from the Bonnier de la Mosson
family, teaching the violin and composing. On 4 October 1746, in his 50th year, his only opera,
Scylla et Glaucus, had its premire at the Acadmie Royale de Musique. In his letter of
dedication he wrote Today I enter upon a new career, surely an allusion to Rameau who
similarly embarked on an operatic career in his 51st year. Leclair's opera, stylistically in the
Rameau tradition, had a mixed reception, received 18 performances in two months and was
then dropped from the repertory.
In 1748 Leclair was taken into the service of a former pupil, Antoine-Antonin, Duc de Gramont,
for whose private theatre at Puteaux (now a suburb of Paris) he became composer and musical
director. Leclair continued to work for the duke after 1751, when the duke's financial
extravagances forced the sale of the Puteaux estate and a return to Paris. For the duke he
composed a number of vocal and instrumental pieces, now lost except for the vocal part of one

ariette (Sadler and Zaslaw, 198081). About 1758 Leclair and his wife parted and set up
separate households, Leclair buying a small house in a dangerous part of Paris. He was
murdered late one evening in 1764 as he entered his house. The Paris police conducted a
thorough investigation and found three suspects: the gardener who found the body; Leclair's
nephew, Guillaume-Franois Vial, with whom he had fallen out; and Mme Leclair herself. The
murder is often said to be shrouded in mystery, but the evidence (in the French Archives
Nationales) is so clearly against the nephew, who was a violinist and the author of L'arbre
gnalogique de l'harmonie (1767), that the only remaining mystery is that he was never
brought to trial.

2. Works.
Leclair's achievement as a composer lay in his modification of the Corellian sonata style to
accommodate French taste. The result was the gots runis prophesied by Couperin, the
vermischter Geschmack later recommended by Quantz. He imbued the Italian sonata style with
elements drawn from the Lullian dance and from the pice of the French viol players and
harpsichordists. Leclair was often able to combine the two styles and to arrive at a new
synthesis. In this he was a child of his time, for comparable syntheses were attempted by many
of his contemporaries. Leclair was one of the most successful. In his concertos he stayed close
to Vivaldian models in the fast movements, more often introducing the French taste in the slow
movements.
In his melody Leclair ranged from the dtach style of the Lullian dances and French viol
players to the cantabile melodies of the Italian violinists, with a moderately ornamented line, fully
written out. His melodic style shows a preference for an accumulation of shorter phrases as
compared with the seamless Fortspinnung of Bach; shorn of their overlay of Rococo
ornamentation, his melodic lines show a basic structure and style close to that of such models
as Corelli and Lully. His harmony is varied and colourful, and includes occasional bold strokes
such as enharmonic modulations and intensely chromatic progressions. One cannot speak of an
early or late style in Leclair's music. His remarkably consistent style was as advanced in 1723
as it was outmoded in 1753. Although none of his works can be dated other than by the
terminus ad quem provided by their first publication, there is some evidence that Leclair, like
Corelli, composed the bulk of his music early in his career and published it little by little; the
increase in harmonic complexity found by Preston in the four books of violin sonatas is perhaps
due to Leclair's preferring to publish the less problematic works first. He handled the favourite
forms of the period with mastery, though without introducing innovations or prefiguring the
development of the sonata form of the early Classical style.
Technically, Leclair made considerable demands. For the left hand there were excursions into
high positions, multiple stops (for virtually entire movements), double trills, and left-hand
tremolo. The bow arm had to master tied-bow staccatos, rapid string crossings and a variety of
subtle articulations. In his own day Leclair was renowned for his brilliant and accurate

performance of multiple stops. Insofar as he wrote out his ornaments and sometimes required
the use of notes ingales, Leclair performed in the French tradition. But in most aspects of violin
technique, including his use of the longer, so-called Tartini bow, his manner of performance
was Italian. An account of 1738 praised his ability to play well in either style.
Leclair's pupils leaving aside a number of noble dilettantes included L'abb le fils, Elisabeth
de Haulteterre, Petit, Geoffroy, Guillaume-Pierre Dupont, Jean-Joseph Rudolphe and, perhaps,
Gavinis and Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges (but not, as erroneously claimed, Dauvergne or
Mahoni dit Le Breton). Leclair is rightly considered the first great figure of the French violin
school, and his influence on French violinists persisted to the end of the 18th century.