Leo Smit's music sounds thoroughly French, with bright and breezy notes that seemingly flow easily from his pen. In reality, it took many years before his musical ideas were incorporated into his compositions. And however French it may sound, Smit was heart and soul attached to Amsterdam and the Netherlands. His song for women's choir, De bruid (‘The Bride’), set to words by Jan Prins, is a declaration of love: ‘The groom was the sunlight and Holland was his bride’. It took years before his legacy would reach an international audience.

Leo Smit came from a mixed Sephardic-Ashkenazi family: his father, Rephaël Smit, was a wealthy shoe-merchant descended from an Ashkenazi family, and the other three grandparents, two of whom were also cousins, were descended from the Sephardic Ricardo family. Leo's grandfather, Jozef David Smit, was a teacher and cantor in the synagogue. Born on 14 May 1900 in Amsterdam, Leo was raised in a mainly secularised family in which there was hardly any connection to Jewish tradition, which is reflected in the names of both children: Leopold and Eleonore Josephine (Nora).

Smit studied at the gymnasium until the age of seventeen and left school without a diploma; he was determined to pursue a career in music. He took music-lessons from a young age and wrote his first composition at the age of sixteen. From 1919 he studied piano and composition with Sem Dresden and Bernard Zweers, among others, at the Amsterdam Conservatoire. In 1924, he was the first student in the history of the Conservatoire to graduate cum laude in composition. Early on, and throughout his career, his orchestral works were performed by the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, under the direction of prominent conductors such as Cornelis Dopper,3 Pierre Monteux and Eduard van Beinum.

He briefly taught harmony, theory and music analysis at the Amsterdam Conservatoire, but in 1927 he moved to Paris to broaden his musical horizons. Smit's ties with the Netherlands remained strong and he received several lucrative commissions. His music for the anniversary games of the universities of Leiden and Delft attracted considerable attention. He also wrote music for films, a new genre for an industry still in its infancy. A major success was his music for Charley Huguenot van der Linden's film Jonge Harten (‘Young Hearts’).