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Letter to the editor

He had perfect pitch as violinist and teacher

He performed with orchestras and his quartet. He also demanded greatness from his students.

By STEPHANIE HAYES, Times Staff Writer
Published August 10, 2007

ST. PETERSBURG - It was obvious: Maurice Leysens was head-over-heels in love with the violin.

After one performance, a fan approached his wife and said, "Your husband doesn't play the violin - he is a part of it."

Leysens, 96, died Wednesday after suffering a heart attack. The night before, he gave a private violin lesson at his home, just like always.

Leysens played violin from childhood. At 13, he performed on a radio broadcast in Ohio.

During the Depression, he played with a dance band at a restaurant in Rochester, N.Y. He was paid $9 a day and ate Egg Foo Young every night.

Things improved from there.

In 1947, Leysens joined the Cleveland Orchestra. And for years, he played with his pride and joy, the Leysens String Quartet. His quartet arrangements were published in a book, his wife said.

In 1951, he moved to Florida. Here, he played for the Florida Gulf Coast Symphony now the Florida Orchestra, the Florida Philharmonic and the Tampa Bay Symphony.

He was no softie. When he gave private lessons, he demanded greatness.

"He said a student had no capacity for learning the violin if they were just playing around, and he just refused to take them," said his wife, Trixie, 88. "He would evaluate them and see if they had potential."

When he found students with promise, he stuck by them.

"He was a person who had perfect pitch, which was a rare thing," said Peter Brown, Leysens' student for 25 years. "He was able to impart the ability and the interest and the desire to play right on tune."

At home, Leysens dropped the stern exterior. In fact, he was downright playful.

He joked that Trixie was a "call girl" - he met her when she was a switchboard operator. He loved to play chess and paint watercolor landscapes. And he had undying love for his 112-pound German shepherd, Mozart.

"You know, everything was fine until Mozart ate my violin," Leysens told the St. Petersburg Times in 2001. He had left his 160-year-old Ceruti violin dangling off a table, and ... chomp.

Still, he never punished Mozart. He pampered him, and secretly fed him scraps under the table.

When the couple were in their 80s, they sold their two-story St. Petersburg house and downsized to a nearby mobile home. Leysens loved it. He could sit on the screened porch and play chess. And Mozart could run free through the big yard.

Perfect harmony.

Stephanie Hayes can be reached at shayes@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8857.

Maurice Leysens

Born: June 17, 1911

Died: Aug. 8, 2007

Survivors: Wife, Flora "Trixie" Leysens; sons, Lee Mason and Victor Mason; brother, Marcel Leysens; nephews, Maurice Leysens, Auguste Leysens; five grandchildren, five great-grandchildren.

Services: Viewing at 2 p.m. Sunday followed by a service at 3 p.m., Brett Funeral Home, 4810 Central Ave., St. Petersburg. Burial in Bossier City, La.

[Last modified August 9, 2007, 22:26:10]