Léon Leblanc (1900–2000), music as a vocation

A CHILDHOOD IN THE WORKSHOP

Leblanc's childhood was spent in the workshops, in contact with workers, machines, wood, and the musicians of the village band that his father, Georges, a bassoonist, led.
When he was six years old, he began to learn the soprano saxophone, and then moved on to the clarinet. He was sent to the Collège Saint-Nicolas de Paris to further his studies, and, at 16, he earned his Brevet Élémentaire (a school certificate requiring two years of elective study).

1921: A YEAR THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

1921 was the pivotal year: after earning his clarinet diploma at the Paris Conservatoire, Leblanc travelled in the United States for three months to display the Noblet-Leblanc clarinets, and soon realized the potential of the North American market. This trip was the birth of Léon Leblanc, entrepreneur.

In 1997, on his 97th birthday, he wrote: "Ever since that first trip in 1921, I knew what had to be done to win over the American market. When I returned to La Couture, with American ideas, I spoke about it with my father, and he gave me free rein."

THE QUEST FOR QUALITY

In 1936, Leblanc became manager of the La Couture-Boussey factory, and his responsibilities in the family business grew.

He never relinquished careful control—with his father Georges at the helm—over the quality of the instruments produced or their intonation.

LEBLANC AND MUSIC

"What's the secret? Music is a vocation. It filled my entire life," said Leblanc in an interview in 1985.

Leblanc was introduced to music in his childhood and never abandoned it throughout his entire life.

His experience and musician's eye were fundamental to his career: a life dedicated to the technological development of instruments, the search for improved sound, and ease of playing.

Raised in a deeply musical environment, his father Georges, bassoonist and conductor of a concert band, doubtless had a strong influence on the young Leblanc. The concert band, which was at the center of the village's musical life, was a family environment, similar to that of the workshop: the musicians came from the various workshops and factories of the village. All the workers—or nearly all—knew how to play an instrument.

THE 1920s: INNOVATION

An enterprising and visionary son and a father oriented toward the future: these are the ingredients of success. In the mid-1920s, new three-story workshops were built in the Belleville district at 70 rue des Rigoles in the 20th arrondissement of Paris.

It was thanks to Charles Houvenaghel (1878–1966), top-class acoustician, clarinetist, and friend of the Leblancs, that experiments and acoustic tests became widespread. They also opened up the way to modernity and to developing higher-performance instruments.

Leblanc and Houvenaghel invented, patented, and manufactured models of clarinet to be able to form an entire orchestra, from the sopranino to the contrabass.

Example for comparison
Here are the octo clarinets, which reached 6 feet (1.8 meters) long, in comparison to a Bb clarinet, the most widespread model worldwide.

1946: THE LEBLANC CORPORATION

On his return from traveling in America in 1921, Leblanc was convinced that he should take on the American market, and, in June 1935, following yearly trips to display his instruments, he formed a company under the name G. Leblanc Inc. in New York for the manufacture, purchase, sale, import, and export of all types of musical instruments.

Likely due to the sociopolitical and economic tensions of the late 1930s, the company was likely never active.

In 1944, Leblanc met Vito Pascucci, repairman for the Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band, in France. After Miller's tragic death in December 1944, Leblanc suggested that Pascucci create a distribution company in the US and Pascucci "rose enthusiastically to the occasion."

In 1946, G. Leblanc Corporation was born, and all the instruments sold were branded Noblet, Leblanc, or Normandy. This was the change of course that meant Leblanc became synonymous with clarinet around the world.

Pascucci and Leblanc, united by a love of music and their workshop experience, did not hesitate to roll up their sleeves and get personally involved in the manufacturing process and fine-tuning of the instruments: "when I founded my office in Kenosha with Pascucci, it wasn't for doing more business, but so that when my instruments arrived below, they could be checked for professional playability, because transport by ship and the humidity of the sea air can warp the wood."

THE FIRES

Two catastrophes struck Leblanc in 1950 and 1968: two fires that destroyed the workshops.

In the night of February 12–13, 1950, a terrible storm devastated the region, the wind was very strong, and the efforts of the firefighters came to naught in the face of the flames devouring the buildings. All the workshops and offices were destroyed, and only the ebony stores were spared. Leblanc's parents' house, beside the factory, was completely gutted by the fire, with only the walls remaining.

Leblanc himself was in Paris, recovering from a car accident—one of several in his lifetime—which required ten months of hospitalization.

His father, with Leblanc's support, led the reconstruction efforts: less than a year later, the new buildings were up, parallel to the road rather than perpendicular as before to allow for future expansion to the rear.

On July 1, 1968, a new catastrophe struck Leblanc: a fire in the buildings raised in 1950. His father had died in 1959 and his mother in 1965, and so this time, it was down to him to handle the emergency. The factory, which produced 2,000 clarinets, 250 flutes, and 50 oboes every month, mostly for the American market, was destroyed for a second time.

The following day, 75 workers, including about 20 women, began to "retrieve from the heap of charred beams items that might be restored." 150 flutes, the archives, and what remained of Georges' instrument collection were ash. No record of customer orders remained: all the administrative documents had burned.

This second trial did not destroy Leblanc, however: with the help of his employees, he got the workshops back up and running again very quickly and resumed production and exportation.

1989, THE BEGINNING OF THE END

In 1989, when Leblanc was 89-years old, he decided to pass the torch on to his friend and business partner Pascucci, and transferred 65% of Leblanc France to him. At that time, approximately 100 people were employed in La Couture-Boussey and 400 in the United States.

For three years, Leblanc stayed on as technical advisor, and, in 1993, after lengthy negotiations, he ceded the majority of his shares in the company, which was considered a national treasure due to its year of founding (1750), which was one of the earliest in France. The sale was a such a delicate matter on a political level that it required the approval of the French President, François Mitterrand.

In February 1998, at the age of 98, Leblanc married Mary Lambret (Lucette Régine Marie, 1928–2012), his coworker and partner of 40 years. A small ceremony was organized at the village church in June.

Leblanc died only a few years later in 2000, several months after celebrating his 100th
birthday.

The final representative of a tradition of craftsmanship dating back to the previous century thus passed on, without fanfare, but not without having transformed the world of manufacturing instruments beyond recognition and having written in stone the name of La Couture-Boussey as a place of pilgrimage for thousands of musicians, professional and amateur alike.