My name is Tony Leatham. I've been an amateur musician most of my life. I play the violin to a moderately high standard (I often play in the First Violin section of my local community orchestra) and discovered a few years ago that my family has some amazing connections to the French Romantic composers of the nineteenth century (thanks to a cousin's diligent geneological research - more on this later) which is why, I guess, music is part of the fabric of my life.
I started this newsletter because I believe that there has been a gradual errosion over the last few years in the number of people who have any classical music in their playlists. It has been branded elitist, has been removed from most curriculums and is in very real danger of becoming a largely forgotten part of our heritage.
I also strongly believe that Classical Music has something to offer everyone - and that in doing so, it does nothing to diminsh any other musical genre, and that it's not an all or nothing kind of thing. Us classical musicians also like letting our hair down (not that I've got any) to classic night club bangers just as much as anyone else.
Music is music no matter who wrote it. It's job is to convey emotion through sound. We all know that some ballads are going to make us cry (Nothing Compares 2 U anyone?) and some irrestibly get your foot tapping (Queen's Don't Stop Me Now for example).
Classical Music is no different. I can't hear the second movement of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto (linked to Spotify below), knowing it was the last major piece of music he wrote in his tragically short life without tearing up. And Felix Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture fills me full of nostalgia for Scotland
And I very strongly believe that adding some Classical to your life will greatly enhance it and take nothing from it (other than, of course, a few minutes three or four times a week to read my newsletters!)
What to Expect
My artricles introduce pieces of music, their composers and their lives. I'll talk about the instruments used and what it's really like to sit in the middle of an orchestra in full Beethoven mode. Every piece discussed will have links to a recording on Spotify so you can dive straight in and get an earful of what I'm talking about.
If you already appreciate classical music, then hopefully, I can either introduce new music to you, or enhance your knowledge and understanding of something familiar.
Deliberately, I do not present these in any form of chronological order - or any order for that matter. Monday might be about Bach and baroque, Wednesday might cover Samuel Barber and 20th Century music. I do this because there's a lot of music to talk about and to introduce in some sort of imposed order be really dull.
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People who want to learn more and go deeper than I do in my open newsletters can subscribe to get more. I produce a minimum of one subscriber-only post each week which might be an in-depth look at what a symphony is, or a biography of a great performer. Or details on how an instrument is made and played. The subscriber newsletters go that bit deeper.
My Family and the French Romantics
I mentioned earlier that my cousin discovered that our family has deep connections with the music of 19th Century Paris. Here's what she found out.
My great grandfater seven times removed was a man called Hippolyte Loret. He was born in a small town in Belgium in 1810 into the family church organ business. During his life, he witnessed the evolution of the so-called romantic organ, and became renowned as one of the foremost makers of his time. Records show that he built over 500 church organs, installed thoughout Europe. You can see one of his being played here:
He had some financial difficulties (his children pressed him for their inheritance when his wife died - apparently not unusual in 19th century Belgium) and consequently had to sell his business. I think he might have been a very driven man as instead of choosing to retire, he relocated to Paris and started again.
When he got to Paris, he was helped by Belgian expatriate, Cezar Franck, a renowned composer. When I found out about this, I must confess to feeling some guilt. I played a movement from Franck's Violin Sonata in A Major for my Grade 8 exam when I was fourteen but I did not like it at the time. It's still not a favourite piece, though I am immensley grateful for Cesar managing to get Hippolyte a couple of contracts to build organs.
Hippolyte's sons were also quite successful in their own right. Clement studied studied organ at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels and moved to Paris in 1865. He was the organist at Notre-Dame des Victoires and went on to teach at the Niedermeyer School, where one of his pupils was Gabriel Faure, a noted and much-loved composer who's Pavane was used by the BBC as the theme tune to the 1998 FIFA World Cup.
Clement was also the organist at what was then called St. Genevieve but is now called Pantheon de Paris which is today a secular musem where the remains of Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola and Pierre and Marie Curie are laid to rest.
Clement's brother Charles was also a prodigious musician and composer, and both of them have extensive collections of music catalogued at the Petrucci Music Library. Unfortuantely, Charles died young but I feel some affinity with him as some of the music he composed is for my instrument, the violin.
Clement had a sone, Victor Loret, who became a friend of Camille St-Saens - another giant of 19th Century French Music, notable for piece such as his Organ Symphony and Carnival of the Animals. Victor wasn't a musician but he was an eminent egyptologist, known for discovering a number of tombs in the Valley of the Kings.