Search - Fabio Bondi, Pascal Monteilhet, Rinaldo Alessandrini :: Jean-Marie Leclair: Premier livre de sonates à violon seul avec la basse continue

Jean-Marie Leclair was without a doubt one of the best witnesses to (and actor in) the rivalry between the French style and Italian style which continually stirred the musical world during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries- at least in Paris. French music had ambivalent feelings toward its Latin sister; it adored her and it detested her. It adopted a superior attitude toward her bur wisely fell under her sway. Then on occasion would appear a man who looked at things in a rather different way and adopted a synthesis: like Francois Couperin, who claimed les gouts reunis (the styles united); or Leclair, who with his virtuosity on the violin could not deny owing the essence of his art to composers like Fontana and Salomone Rossi and Vivaldi, or to the violin makers of Cremona who dominated Europe in their field. Jean-Marie Leclair was born in Lyons in 1697. He first appeared in the history of music as a dancer, as in his day dancing, playing, and composition were still all firmly linked. He was ballet master to the Court of Turin and worked there on his violin playing. When he was 25 he published his first collection of sonatas in Paris. Throughout the rest of his career, he devoted most of his energies to instrumental music, making him the real creator of the French violin school.