Jean-Marie Leclair would have been a famous composer if he had not taken it into his thick head to fight Guidon (no wikipedia entry) over the control of Musique du Roy. (The history of music is full of Guidons, untalented bastards who have left us nothing worth listening to, but who nevertheless are good at social climbing and holding onto posts against challenges from their betters; Locatelli comes to mind; and Tchaikovsky; but not Salieri, who had in fact been generally supportive to the younger generation of composers, Mozart especially).
Now, because Leclair was a fool (picked a fight he could not win) he lost a promising career, and we lost a lot of good music, as this recording of fragments of Leclair's only opera, Scylla and Glaucus shows. (About which see an interesting article here -- it´s point is that the French centralizing obsession was responsible for a much lower output of the French opera, as opposed to the free market Italian competition; long live the free market!)
The recording is by the very good Raymond Leppard, leading English Chamber Orchestra. Enjoy.
No comments:
Post a Comment