Jean-Marie Leclair was the most talented and influential French violinist / composer during the reign of Lousi XV. Indeed, he is credited as being the founder of the French school of violin playing. L’Abbe le fills (1727-1803) was one of Leclair’s most celebrated pupils, who in this turn wrote the Pricipes du Violon (1761), the most significant French eighteenth-century source on violin technique. Leclair started his professional career as a dancer at the Lyons opera – an important skill for the dance-orientated French – but shortly after this he went to Italy and studied the violin with Corelli’s pupil, Giovanni Battista Somis (1686-1763). The music-loving financier Ferrand described Leclair as: a real artist, passionate about his violin… with a soul so pure, as candid as that of Corelli (the cynosure of all string players), incapable of jealousy and enthusiastic about the skills of his rivals.

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St Bartholemews Church, Orford, Suffolk 10-12 February 1993