Daily Archives: September 3, 2019

On September 3 ~ in Music History

Posted by MaryO on

 

• 1596 ~ Nicolo Amati, Violin maker, passed away in 1684

• 1910 ~ Dorothy Maynor, American soprano and educator

• 1914 ~ Tom Glazer, American folk singer, composer of a film score

• 1921 ~ Thurston Dart, British musicologist

• 1925 ~ Hank (Henry Williams) Thompson, ‘Crown Prince of Country Music’, singer with The Brazos Valley Boys

• 1933 ~ Tompall (Tom Paul) Glaser, Singer with The Glaser Brothers

• 1940 ~ Artie Shaw and the Gramercy Five recorded Summit Ridge Drive for Victor Records.

• 1942 ~ Al Jardine, Songwriter, singer, musician: bass, guitar with The Beach Boys

• 1942 ~ Frank Sinatra bid adieu to the Tommy Dorsey Band as he started his solo singing career.

• 1944 ~ Gary Leeds, Drummer with The Walker Brothers

• 1945 ~ George Biondo, Musician with Steppenwolf

• 1948 ~ Donald Brewer, Drummer, songwriter with Silver Bullet Band; Flint; Grand Funk Railroad

• 1963 ~ Reprise Records, owned by Frank Sinatra, became part of Warner Brothers Records. The ‘Chairman of the Board’ continued to record for the label.

• 1985 ~ Jo (Jonathan) Jones passed away.  He was an American jazz drummer. A bandleader and pioneer in jazz percussion, Jones anchored the Count Basie Orchestra rhythm section from 1934 to 1948.

Treble Maker!

Posted by MaryO on

 

When my students are first working with the Grand Staff, they are often confused about the placement of the various clefs.

In piano music, we generally use only the G-clef (Treble clef – not “trouble clef” as some think!) and the F-clef (Bass clef)  I try to show students how the curvy part of the G-clef wraps around the G above middle C and the F-clef looks sort of like an F marking the F below middle C.  I draw out G and F on the staff to show how these could have looked.

Originally, instead of a special clef symbol, the reference line of the staff was simply labeled with the name of the note it was intended to bear: F and C and, more rarely, G. These were the most often-used ‘clefs’ in Gregorian chant notation.  Gregorian chant developed mainly in western and central Europe during the 9th and 10th centuries, with later additions and redactions.

Over time the shapes of these letters became stylized, leading to their current versions.