Marcelle de Lacour
| Marcelle de Lacour | |
|---|---|
 Robert and Marcelle de Lacour | |
| Born |
Marcelle Schaeffer 6 November 1896 Besançon, France |
| Died |
24 March 1997 (aged 100) Paris, France |
| Nationality | France |
| Occupation | Harpsichordist, teacher |
Marcelle de Lacour (6 November 1896 – 24 March 1997) was a French harpsichordist and teacher.
Early life
Marcelle de Lacour was born Marcelle Schaeffer at Besançon, France, the capital of the department of Doubs, France. Her father came from Alsace-Lorraine and her mother from the Franche-Comté. As a child she showed exceptional talent for music, first learning the piano then the harp, an instrument at which she excelled. She married the lawyer and amateur musician Robert de Lacour and settled in Paris in the middle of the 1920s.
There she studied with Wanda Landowska and henceforth pretty much devoted herself to the harpsichord, and helped to make harpsichord music fashionable.
Career
By the time of the outbreak of the Second World War she had given numerous recitals in France, Great Britain and other European countries. Her repertoire as soloist, either with small groups of musicians or large orchestras, encompassed the music of the Baroque and Classical periods (Loeillet, Bodin de Boismortier, Lalande, Lully, Charpentier, Couperin, Rameau, Purcell, Pachelbel, Bach, Schütz, Buxtehude, Scarlatti, Handel, Telemann). But she also gave recitals of contemporary compositions notably by composers including (Bohuslav Martinů, Florent Schmitt, Alexandre Tansman, and Francis Poulenc) who dedicated several works to her.
After 1945 she performed with the Paris Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orchestre National de France as well as with the oboist Pierre Pierlot, the Pasquier Trio and the flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal. On radio she created the programme « Les tournois du royaume de la musique » [Tournaments through the realm of Music], a music competition for young artists, and also took part in the famous « Analyse spectrale de l'Occident » [Spectral Analysis of the West] a major series on Western culture instigated by the composer Henry Barraud. She also made several recordings with His Master's Voice, Pathé, L'Oiseau Lyre and Scoladisques.
She was professor of harpsichord at the Conservatoire de Paris, creating the class in 1955 and teaching until her retirement in September 1967. Her classes included students from Bulgaria, China, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States.
Death
She lived her final years in Paris and died in 1997, aged 100.