Léon Kreutzer

Léon Charles François Kreutzer
(b Paris, 23 Sept 1817; d Vichy, 6 Oct 1868). Writer on music and composer, son of (2) Jean Nicolas Auguste Kreutzer.

He studied the piano and composition privately. His cultural interests and independence of thought led him to music criticism; according to Fétis he began writing for L’union in 1840, concentrating on aspects of opera and operatic history. The series of articles ‘De l’opéra en Europe’ was published in the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris between 4 February and 23 September 1849. His work also appeared in the Revue contemporaine (from 1854), L’opinion publique and Le théâtre. In collaboration with Edouard Fournier he wrote the articles ‘Opéra’ and ‘Opéra-Comique’ in the Encyclopédie du XIXe siècle, later published as Essai sur l’art lyrique au théâtre (Paris, 1849).

Kreutzer’s compositions, which attracted favourable comment from Fétis, are for the most part unpublished. His Symphony in F minor (privately printed, c1860) shows in its first and third movements excessively close adherence to Beethoven’s symphonic form and style, but the remaining two movements are marked out by the inclusion of a battery of six saxophones and five saxhorns in addition to the normal orches