Today’s piece is Serenade by Franz Schubert composed in 1826. Find it in Piano Pronto Movement 4 and anthologies of classical piano music.
Music Box
Clarinet
Ragtime – see if you can find the melody!
July 23: On This Day in Music
• 1757 ~ Domenico Scarlatti, Italian composer and harpsichordist, died. He composed over 500 keyboard sonatas, using new techniques and achieving brilliant effects.
• 1796 ~ Franz Adolf Berwald, Swedish composer and violinst
• 1916 ~ Ben Weber, American composer and winner of the Thorne Music Award in 1965
• 1925 ~ Gloria DeHaven, Singer
• 1928 ~ Leon Fleisher, American pianist and conductor
• 1934 ~ Steve Lacy (Lackritz), Jazz musician, soprano sax
• 1941 ~ Sonny Dunham and his orchestra recorded the tune that was to become Mr. Dunham’s theme song. Memories of You was Bluebird record #11239.
• 1940 ~ Gary Stites, Singer
• 1943 ~ Tony Joe White, Country Singer
• 1945 ~ Dino Danelli, Musician, drummer with The (Young) Rascals
• 1946 ~ Andy Mackay, Musician, saxophone, woodwinds with Roxy Music
• 1947 ~ David Essex (Cook), Rock Singer
• 1940 ~ (John Donald) Don Imus, Radio DJ & talk-show host
• 1950 ~ Blair Thornton, Musician, guitar with Bachman-Turner Overdrive
• 1961 ~ Martin Gore, Musician with DePeche Mode
• 1966 ~ Frank Sinatra hit the top of the pop album chart with his Strangers in the Night. It was the first #1 Sinatra LP since 1960. The album’s title song had made it to number one on the pop singles chart on July 2nd.
• 1969 ~ Three Dog Night received a gold record for the single, One. It was the first of seven million-sellers for the pop-rock group.
• 1985 ~ Kaye Kyser, Bandleader, passed away.
• 2000 ~ Yoshimi Takeda, a former director of the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, died at the age of 67 of complications from cancer. He had been music director and resident conductor of the NMSO from 1974 to 1984, holding the post concurrently with that of the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra. Takeda made his debut with the Tokyo Symphony in 1958. He began his U.S. career in 1962 as a Kulas Fellow with the Cleveland Orchestra in a conductor advanced training program. He came to the NMSO in 1970 after six years as the Honolulu Symphony’s associate director.
• 2002 ~ Clark Gesner, who created the musical “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown,” died of a heart attack while visiting the Princeton Club in Manhattan. He was 64. Gesner’s well-known musical, based on Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comic strip, opened in March 1967 in a New York theater and went on to tour nationally. The 14-song show featured Gary Burghoff as Charlie Brown and Bob Balaban as Linus. It made a month-long leap to Broadway in the early 1970s, and was revived on Broadway in 1999. Gesner, who was born in Maine, attended Princeton and was active in the Triangle Club, the university’s theater troupe.
Daily Listening Assignments ~ July 23
Today we will listen to Minuet in G. Several people composed a Minuet (a slow, stately ballroom dance for two in 3/4 time, popular especially in the 18th century) in the key of G including Beethoven, Mozart and Bach.
How are the same? How are they different?
JS Bach’s version
The Bach version also was “acquired” for a popular song in the 1960s
Beethoven
Rowlf from the Muppets plays the Beethoven Minuet
Mozart
So – never say to your teacher that “I already played that” – you never know which version s/he has in mind!
July 22: On This Day in Music
Be sure your student reads and listens to Today’s Daily Listening Assignment
• 1597 ~ Virgilio Mazzocchi, Composer
• 1635 ~ Pietro Antonio Tamburini, Composer, died at the age of 45
• 1642 ~ Johann Quirsfeld, Composer
• 1651 ~ Ferdinand Tobias Richter, Composer
• 1721 ~ François-Joseph Krafft, Composer
• 1786 ~ Vaclav Kalous, Composer ~ died at the age of 71
• 1794 ~ Jean-Benjamin de La Borde, Composer ~ died at the age of 59
• 1830 ~ Herbert Stanley Oakeley, Composer
• 1833 ~ Benjamin Hanby, Composer
• 1848 ~ Lucien Fugère, French baritone
• 1871 ~ Akos Buttykai, Composer
• 1873 ~ Ettore Pozzoli, Composer
• 1878 ~ Ernest R. Ball, Composer
• 1879 ~ Gustaf Heintze, Composer
• 1889 ~ Frederick Preston Search, Composer
• 1893 ~ Katherine Lee Bates wrote America the Beautiful in Colorado
• 1913 ~ Licia Albanese, Italian-born American soprano. She is best remembered for her roles at New York’s Metropolitan Opera and for her recording of La Boheme conducted by Arturo Toscanini.
• 1919 ~ De Falla and Massine’s “Three-cornered Hat”, premiered in London
• 1924 ~ Margaret Whiting, Pop Singer
• 1932 ~ Florenz Ziegfeld, U.S. theatrical producer and impresario, died. He was famed for his “Follies” spectacular revues which ran every year from 1907 to 1931.
• 1933 ~ Caterina Jarboro became the first black prima donna of an opera company. The singer performed Verdi’s “Aida” with the Chicago Opera Company at the Hippodrome in New York City.
• 1937 ~ Chuck Jackson, Singer
• 1937 ~ Hal Kemp and his orchestra recorded the now-standard tune, Got a Date with an Angel, for Victor Records in Hollywood, California. The distinctive vocal on the tune is provided by Skinnay Ennis.
• 1940 ~ George Clinton, Singer
• 1941 ~ Thomas Wayne (Perkins), Singer
• 1944 ~ Estelle Bennett, Singer with The Ronettes
• 1944 ~ Richard Davies, Keyboards, singer with Supertramp
• 1945 ~ Bobby Sherman, Singer, actor and founder of TAC-5, a paramedics group
• 1947 ~ Don Henley, Drummer, singer with Shiloh; The Eagles, songwriter
• 1959 ~ Benjamin Britten’s “Missa Brevis” in D premiered
• 1963 ~ The Beatles released “Introducing the Beatles”
• 1967 ~ The Billboard singles chart showed that Windy, by The Association, was the most popular record in the U.S. for the fourth straight week. The Los Angeles~based sextet would make way for Jim Morrison and The Doors a week later when Light My Fire became the hottest record of the mid~summer.
• 1977 ~ Tony Orlando announced his retirement from show business. Orlando was performing in Cohasset, MA when he said that he had finally decided to call it quits. Orlando had two solo hits in 1961 (Halfway to Paradise and Bless You) and 14 hits with his backup singers, Telma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent, (known as Dawn) through the mid~1970s. He also hosted a weekly TV variety show with Dawn from 1974~1976.
• 1985 ~ Bruce Springsteen became the hottest ticket in the rock concert biz as 70,000 Cleveland fans lined up (in less than three hours) to grab tickets to see the ‘Boss’.
• 2001 ~ Bob Ferguson, who wrote the standard Wings of a Dove and produced records for Dolly Parton, Porter Wagoner and other country music stars, died at the age of 73. Ferguson, a native of Willow Springs, Mo., was hired in 1955 to produce films for the Tennessee Game & Fish Commission. He worked there until 1960, when he wrote and produced the No. 1 hit Wings of a Dove for Ferlin Husky. As a staff producer at RCA Records in the 1960s and early ’70s, Ferguson worked with artists like Parton, Connie Smith, Danny Davis and the Nashville Brass, Jim Ed Brown, George Hamilton IV and Archie Campbell. He wrote The Carroll County Accident, a No. 2 hit for Wagoner. It was named the best country song of 1969 by the Country Music Association.
• 2002 ~ Jazz singer Marion Montgomery, who frequently performed on British television and was known for her smooth, versatile voice, died. She was 67. Montgomery was born in Natchez, Miss., and lived in England for more than 30 years. She was well-known to television audiences as a resident singer on the British Broadcasting Corp. talk show “Parkinson” through the 1970s and was widely praised for her smooth voice and intimate, relaxed singing style. Montgomery worked as a cabaret singer in Las Vegas, New York and Los Angeles before moving to Britain. She starred in the West End production of “Anything Goes” in 1969 and recorded a one-woman show for the BBC in 1975. Her albums included “Swings for Winners and Losers” (1963), “Let There Be Marion Montgomery,” (1963) and “Sometimes in the Night” (1989).
• 2025 ~ John Michael “Ozzy” Osbourne died at the age of 76. He was an English singer, songwriter and media personality. He rose to prominence during the 1970s as the lead vocalist of the heavy metal band Black Sabbath, during which period he adopted the nickname “Prince of Darkness”.
Daily Listening Assignments ~ July 22
Today we listen to Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”. The real name for this work is The Piano Sonata No. 14 in C♯ minor “Quasi una fantasia”, Op. 27, No. 2. It was completed in 1801 and dedicated in 1802 to his pupil, Countess Giulietta Guicciardi
The piece is one of Beethoven’s most popular compositions for the piano, and it was a popular favorite even in his own day.
It’s in the Piano Pronto Beethoven book as well as many compilations of classical music.
Arranged for piano and orchestra
An animation
The above were all of the first movement only. Here’s the whole sonata played by Valentina Lisitsa:
July 21: On This Day in Music
Be sure your student reads and listens to Today’s Daily Listening Assignment
• 1748 ~ Louis-Henry Paisible, Composer
• 1779 ~ Gottlob Wiedebein, Composer
• 1782 ~ Placidus Cajetan von Camerloher, Composer, died at the age of 63
• 1797 ~ Franz Schoberlechner, Composer
• 1865 ~ Robert Kahn, Composer
• 1870 ~ Josef Strauss, Austrian composer, died at the age of 42
• 1896 ~ Jean Rivier-Villemomble France, Composer
• 1898 ~ Ernest Willem Mulder, Composer
• 1898 ~ Sara Carter, Vocalist/guitarist with the Carter Family
• 1903 ~ Theodore Karyotakis, Composer
• 1906 ~ Daniel Ayala Perez, Composer
• 1915 ~ Floyd McDaniel ~ blues singer/guitarist
• 1920 ~ Isaac Stern, American concert violinist
Read quotes by and about Stern
More information about Stern
• 1920 ~ Manuel Valls Gorina, Composer
• 1921 ~ Billy Taylor, Orchestra leader on the David Frost Show
• 1922 ~ Kay Starr (Katherine Starks), Pop Singer
• 1925 ~ Lovro Zupanovic, Composer
• 1926 ~ Albert Fuller, American harpsichordist
• 1926 ~ Norman Jewison, Director of Jesus Christ, Superstar, Fiddler on the Roof
• 1927 ~ Stefan Niculescu, Composer
• 1931 ~ Leon Schidlowsky, Composer
• 1931 ~ Ted Husing was master of ceremonies for the very first CBS-TV program. The gala show featured singer Kate Smith, composer George Gershwin and New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker.
• 1935 ~ Kaye Stevens, Singer and comedienne on the Jerry Lewis Show
• 1938 ~ Anton Emil Kuerti, Composer
• 1938 ~ Paul Hindemith and Leonide Massines ballet premiered in London
• 1947 ~ Cat Stevens (Steven Demitri Georgiou) (Muslim name: Yusuf Islam), British folk-rock singer and songwriter
• 1948 ~ Donald Nichols Tweedy, Composer, died at the age of 58
• 1950 ~ Albert Riemenschneider, Composer, died at the age of 71
• 1958 ~ The last of Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts programs aired on CBS-TV. Many artists got their start on Talent Scouts, including Tony Bennett, Pat Boone, The McGuire Sisters and a singer named Connie Francis, who not only sang but played the accordion, as well.
• 1962 ~ Dmitri Shostakovitch completed his 13th Symphony
• !963 ~ Jan and Dean’s “Surf City” hit #1
• 1964 ~ Dmitri Shostakovitch completed his 10th String quartet
• 1969 ~ Just one day after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Duke Ellington and a portion of his band performed a 10-minute composition on ABC-TV titled Moon Maiden. The work featured piano, drums, bass and vocals.
• 1973 ~ Bad, Bad Leroy Brown reached the top spot on the Billboard pop singles chart, becoming Jim Croce’s first big hit. Croce died in a plane crash two months later (September 20, 1973).
• 1976 ~ “Guys & Dolls” opened at Broadway Theater New York City for 239 performances
• 1994 ~ Dorothy Collins, Singer on Your Hit Parade, died at the age of 67
• 1995 ~ Edwin “Russell” House, Saxophonist, died at the age of 65
• 2000 ~ Iain Hamilton, the Scottish composer who turned Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” into an opera at the age of 78. Hamilton wrote four symphonies and dozens of orchestral and chamber works but is known best for his vocal music, which includes a cantata based on the poems of Robert Burns. “Anna Karenina” premiered at the English National Opera in 1981 to critical acclaim. His other operas include “Agamemnon”, “The Catiline Conspiracy”, based on a Ben Jonson play, and an adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s play “The Royal Hunt of the Sun”. From 1961 to 1978 he was a professor of music at Duke University in North Carolina.
• 2000 ~ Barbra Streisand announced final concerts
• 2001 ~ Norman Hall Wright, the last surviving writer who worked on the Disney film Fantasia 2000, died at the age of 91. Wright studied at the University of Southern California before being hired by Walt Disney Productions. He started as an animator but later became a writer, producer and director. Wright developed the story of The Nutcracker Suite sequence for Fantasia 2000. He also was responsible for a sequence in Bambi. He wrote several cartoon shorts for Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy and also produced several Wonderful World of Disney television programs.
• 2002 ~ Gus Dudgeon, a respected music producer who worked on many of Elton John’s hit recordings, died in a car crash in western England. He was 59. Dudgeon produced Rocket Man, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Your Song, Daniel and Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me. Dudgeon also produced David Bowie’s Space Oddity and worked with other stars, including Chris Rea and Joan Armatrading. But it was his partnership with Sir Elton in the 1970s for which he will be best remembered. Dudgeon began his career in the early 1960s as a tea boy, running errands at Olympic Studios in London before joining Decca Records. He engineered the Zombies’ classic She’s Not There and the groundbreaking Blues Breakers album by John Mayall with Eric Clapton, before moving into producing.
• 2015 ~ Theodore Meir Bikel, Austrian-American actor, folk singer, musician, composer, and activist, died at the age of 91.
• 2023 ~ Tony Bennett died at the age of 96. In 1962, Bennett recorded his signature song, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco”.
National Ice Cream Day
National Ice Cream Day is observed each year on the 3rd Sunday in July and is a part of National Ice Cream Month. This day is a fun celebration enjoyed with a bowl, cup or cone filled with your favorite flavor of ice cream.
Thousands of years ago, people in the Persian Empire would put snow in a bowl, pour grape-juice concentrate over it and eat it as a treat. They did this when the weather was hot and used the snow saved in the cool-keeping underground chambers known as “yakhchal”, or taken from the snowfall that remained at the stop of mountains by the summer capital.
It is believed that ice cream was first introduced into the United States by Quaker colonists who brought their ice cream recipes with them. Their ice cream was sold at shops in New York and other cities during the colonial era.
- Ben Franklin, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson enjoyed ice cream.
- 1813 -First Lady Dolley Madison served ice cream at the Inaugural Ball.
- 1832 – African American confectioner, Augustus Jackson, created multiple ice cream recipes as well as a superior technique to manufacture ice cream.
- 1843 – Philadelphian, Nancy Johnson, received the first U.S. patent for a small-scale hand-cranked ice cream freezer.
- 1920 – Harry Burt puts the first ice cream trucks on the streets.
HOW TO OBSERVE
Enjoy National Ice Cream Day by sharing some with your family and friends! Post on social media using #NationalIceCreamDay.
HISTORY
National Ice Cream Day is a holiday declared by President Ronald Reagan back in 1984 to promote the economic well-being of the U.S. dairy industry. It was a nod to the fact that the frozen treat is produced using nearly ten percent of U.S. dairy farmers’ milk supply.
Reagan’s proclamation also called on the people of the United States to do their duty and pay tribute to ice-cream with “appropriate ceremonies and activities.” So who are we to argue?
Daily Listening Assignments ~ July 21
Today’s piece is called the British Grenadiers and I’ve included it because most students today haven’t heard of the piece OR know what a grenadier is. Find this in Keyboard Kickoff, Prelude and many other piano method books.
“The British Grenadiers” is a traditional marching song of British, Australian and Canadian military units whose badge of identification features a grenade. The original melody dates from the 17th century.
Some talk of Alexander, and some of Hercules
Of Hector and Lysander, and such great names as these
But of all the world’s great heroes
There’s none that can compare
With a tow, row row row, row row row
To the British Grenadiers
When e’er we are commanded to storm the palisades
Our leaders march with fuses, and we with hand grenades;
We throw them from the glacis about the enemies’ ears
With a tow, row row row, row row row
For the British Grenadiers
Then let us fill a bumper, and drink a health to those
Who carry caps and pouches, and wear the louped clothes
May they and their commanders live happy all their years
Sing tow, row row row, row row row
For the British Grenadiers
In the examples below you can hear the steady marching drumbeat.
The band of the Highlands and Lowlands plays “The British Grenadiers” at Edinburgh Castle
Fife and drum
Piano
Guitar
A piano tutorial
A different take
July 20: On This Day in Music
Be sure your student reads and listens to Today’s Daily Listening Assignment
• 1872 ~ Déodat de Séeverac, French composer
• 1913 ~ Sally Ann Howes, Singer
• 1932 ~ Nam June Paik, Korean-born American avant-guard composer
• 1938 ~ Jo Ann Campbell, Singer
• 1940 ~ Billboard magazine published its first listing of best-selling singles. 10 tunes were listed.
• 1943 ~ John Lodge, Guitar with Justin Hayward, singer with the Moody Blues
• 1944 ~ T.G. Shepherd (William Bowder), Country Singer
• 1946 ~ Kim Carnes, Grammy Award-winning singer, co-wrote the score to Flashdance
• 1946 ~ John Almond, Reeds, keyboards, vibes with Johnny Almond and the Music Machine
• 1947 ~ Carlos Santana, Mexican-born American rock guitarist
• 1958 ~ Mick McNeil, Keyboards with Simple Minds
• 1961 ~ Stop the World, I Want to Get Off opened in London. The show went to Broadway in 1962.
• 1963 ~ Dino Esposito, Singer
• 1963 ~ Ray Conniff received two gold-record awards – for the albums, Concert in Rhythm and Memories are Made of This – on Columbia Records. Conniff recorded dozens of albums of easy listening music for the label. He had been a trombonist and arranger with Bunny Berigan, Bob Crosby, Harry James, Vaughn Monroe and Artie Shaw.
• 1964 ~ Chris Cornell, Grammy Award-winning musician: drums, singer, songwriter with Soundgarden
• 1966 ~ Stone Gossard, Rock Musician
Daily Listening Assignments ~ July 20
Today’s Listening assignment is Dance of the Hours by Amilcare Ponchielli. This is a short ballet and is the act 3 finale of the opera La Gioconda. It depicts the hours of the day through solo and ensemble dances. The opera was first performed in 1876 and was revised in 1880.
Later performed on its own, the Dance of the Hours was at one time one of the best known and most frequently performed ballets.
It became even more widely known after its inclusion in the 1940 Disney animated film Fantasia where it is depicted as a comic ballet featuring anthropomorphized ostriches, hippopotamuses, elephants, and alligators.
From Fantasia
Orchestral version
Ballet
Piano
Spike Jones
And, who could forget Allan Sherman’s version, Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh?
MaryO'Studio 