Musical Mysteries: From Mozart to John Lennon

3 Finale Marked Presto: The Killing of Leclair

38 · Musical Mysteries 38 3 Finale Marked Presto: The Killing of Leclair The murder of Jean-Marie Leclair, eighteenth-century composer and violin virtuoso, is a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie. The Paris detective forces headed by Lieutenant of Police Antoine Gabriel de Sartine picked their way through a maze thickly populated with suspicious characters and lying witnesses and, to make their path more difficult, encountered many red herrings. The motive for the crime was perhaps the most bewildering enigma of all; the investigators were compelled to consider the possibility that Leclair’s sudden death was due to robbery, marital discord, professional hostility, or perhaps the dark act of a sardonic psychopath. In 1764 the sixty-seven-year-old Leclair would have been justified in resting on the laurels of his distinguished career. Born in 1697 in Lyon, the eldest of eight children of a master lace maker, he reportedly made his debut as a dancer at Rouen. He later followed his father’s profession for a while in his native city, where he married the daughter of a liquor merchant in 1716. In 1722 he went to Turin to serve as principal dancer and ballet master. It was in the Turin theater that he mounted his first stage works, mythological ballets composed in the popular taste of the time. He then returned to Paris, where in 1723 he published his earliest work of instrumental music (which was to be his principal genre); this maiden effort was a book of sonatas for violin and basso continuo. Five years later Leclair made a brilliant debut as a violinist in the Concert Spirituel. About that time he published a second book of sonatas in which his characteristic and frequent use of double stops showed the influence of the violinist Giovanni Battista somis, with whom he had studied at Turin. Leclair’s Finale Marked Presto: The Killing of Leclair · 39 first wife died, and in 1730 he married Louise Roussel, a music engraver who had published some of his works. Leclair’s career continued to blossom. Beginning in 1733 he performed in the royal orchestra, where he encountered a formidable rival, violinist Pierre Guignon. Neither of them wanted to play second fiddle to the other’s first violin, so they agreed to change places on a regular monthly rotation. Guignon allowed Leclair to begin the new arrangement by occupying first place. However, it is said that when Leclair’s month had run out he resigned from the orchestra rather than pass to the second rank. After leaving the Paris orchestra, Leclair spent several years in Holland under the sponsorship of Princess Anne of Orange and of François du Liz and was subsequently called to the court of Don Philip of Spain at Chamb éry. In 1746 Leclair’s only opera, Glaucus et Scylla, was performed with moderate success at the Paris Opéra. In about 1749 he came under the protection of his last patron, the Duke de Gramont, who had established a fashionable theater in his villa at Puteaux. Here Leclair served as first violinist and contributed ballet pieces and divertissements to its repertory. By the end of the next decade, a streak of misanthropy, quite in the style of Molière, seems to have afflicted Leclair. In 1758 he left his wife and lived alone in a house on the rue de Carême-Prenant in a northeast suburb of Paris near what is now the st. martin Canal. it was a small, ramshackle two-story structure situated within a walled garden entered through a gate from the street. The Duke de Gramont was concerned about the dangerous circumstances of his favorite musician living in seclusion and many times offered Leclair lodging at his own residence. According to Barnabé Farmian Durosoy, the principal authority on Leclair’s last years, the composer was going to accept the offer, but he was not fated to do so. At about 6:00 a.m. on october 23, 1764, Louis Bourgeois, a sixty-fouryear -old gardener, passed by Leclair’s garden gate and noticed that it was open. This seemed strange—but not strange enough to overcome his early-morning appetite, and he went on to his regular place for breakfast. on his way back he met Jacques Paysant, who tended Leclair’s garden, and told him about the open gate. Shortly afterward, Paysant appeared at Bourgeois’ house in obvious distress. in the garden he had found his employer ’s hat and wig lying...