A LEADING figure in the revival of interest in early music, from Haslemere, has died aged 76.

Jeanne-Marie Dolmetsch, elder twin-daughter of Dr Carl Dolmetsch CBE, and his first wife Mary, grew up amid a whirlwind of music-making that encompassed teaching, concert-giving both at home and abroad, and musical-instrument making at the family’s Haslemere workshops.

They were established in 1917, when Arnold Dolmetsch and his young family, including Carl, moved from London, to escape the bombing by Germany’s Zeppelin airships.

Moving from The Royal Naval School (now the Royal School) to the Royal Academy of Music in London, she studied violin and piano, although she had appeared on concert platforms and in recordings on the recorder and the viol from her early teens.

In later life, she combined the skills of an instrument maker with those of a professional musician.

Jeanne-Marie was quite undaunted when, only a few hours before a concert in Northern France, she had to make playable, a locally-sourced double-manual harpsichord in poor regulation and tuning.

From the 1960s she, and her twin sister Marguerite, joined musical colleagues including Andrew Pledge and Nigel Foster, to perform programmes of early music to clubs and societies throughout the UK, and overseas.

For more than 40 years, Jeanne-Marie researched, scripted and presented many hundreds of lectures on aspects of musical and cultural history, illustrated with live and pre-recorded music and sumptuous slides. Faced with a six-week tour of Australia and New Zealand, she had to convert the programmes into digital format, and learn to master the unfamiliar technology.

Each summer she would assist her father in directing the annual Haslemere Festival of Early Music, which her grandfather Arnold had established in 1925. The twins were able to invite many of their academy friends to perform at the festival, adding the vigour of youth to its established stars.

She succeeded as director in 1997.

From 1997, Jeanne-Marie was also musical director of The Dolmetsch Foundation, which publishes an annual journal that university and music school libraries around the world subscribe to.

A memorial service will take place at All Saints Church, Grayswood at 2.30pm on April 6.

Picture by Michael Chevis.