Clair Omar Musser
Encyclopedia
Clair Omar Musser was a marimba
virtuoso
, a conductor
and promoter
of marimba orchestra
s, a composer
, a teacher
, a designer
of keyboard
percussion instruments, an inventor, and an engineer
for Hughes Aircraft
.
and began to study the xylophone
in the 5th grade. Upon witnessing a performance of Teddy Brown
playing marimba with the Earl Fuller
's Rector Novelty Orchestra, Musser was inspired to study with Brown's former teacher, Philip Rosenweig. Musser soon became recognized as a virtuoso in his own right, performing as a soloist, with orchestras, and in an early Warner Bros.
Vitaphone
film.
. Essentially, the instrument combined a marimba and a vibraphone
, with a built-in amplification system for the lower marimba keys. Musser toured with this instrument between 1927 and 1930.
Some time between 1949 and 1950, Musser designed and built a predecessor to the drum machine
, alliteratively called the "Musser Maestro Marimba Metron," or more simply the "Rhythm Machine." The machine, used by Musser to accompany performances and lessons, measures 1.5 feet wide and about 3 feet square. Manufactured using vacuum tube
technology, it plays 13 electronically generated rhythmic accompaniments such as the bolero
, waltz
, rhumba, cha-cha
, tango
, samba
, and beguine. In addition to the pre-set loops, percussion sounds can be activated using push-botton controls, which show wear from Musser operating them with his mallets while playing.
Musser's final design project was the Celestaphone, an instrument which served to merge Musser's interests in outer space
and music. The frame and the bars were forged from 678 pounds of meteorites from Musser's own collection, which he began gathering from all over the world in 1936. In design and appearance it most closely resembles a pedal glockenspiel
.
event in Chicago. In 1933 at the Century of Progress International Exhibition
in Chicago, Musser conducted a marimba orchestra of 100 players. A special marimba, the "Century of Progress Model" was designed by Musser and produced by the Deagan company. Most of Musser's future marimba orchestras would follow a similar model. That is, Musser would select players, arrange and write the music, rehearse and conduct the orchestra, and design a special instrument for the group. The largest group Musser assembled was an orchestra of 300 marimbas appearing at the Chicago Railroad Fair in 1950.
. Musser was a member of the Acoustical Society of America
and the Society for the Advancement of Science
. He understood Fourier's theorem and the applications of that theorem to the tuning
of a marimba bar. This understanding allowed Musser and the technicians at Deagan to tune not just the fundamental, but also the harmonics of the bar, creating a clear and unmuddled pitch
.
, Musser left the Deagan Company to start his own firm, Musser Marimbas, Inc. Unfortunately, business accumen was not one of Musser's strengths, and the company was shortly sold to Lyons Band Instrument Manufacturers in 1956. Today, Musser marimbas are a division of the Ludwig
company. Musser's design work, from the bars to the frame, refined and standardized the marimba such as we know it today.
, the first of its kind, and headed the department from 1942 until 1952. There he instructed many outstanding marimba artists and teachers, including Vida Chenoweth
.
to 10 works at a time, and then began a new set. Since we know of works up to opus 11, it can safely be assumed that over 100 works have been lost. Musser was known to be somewhat disorganized and careless in certain matters, and with his etudes he would simply write one for a student, hand out the original, and think nothing more of it. Two of Musser's other surviving works are arrangements from his marimba orchestras. Rosales' "Bolero" from the 1933 Century of Progress Orchestra, and Saint-Saens' "Piano Concerto no. 2" from a 1942 performance by a 160-piece marimba orchestra at Soldier's Field in Chicago.
). The musser grip allowed for greater independence between individual mallets, and would later be modified into its modern form by Leigh Howard Stevens
.
This heading doesn't make sense since Gary Burton wasn't born until 1943. Before that, the older technique was known as Cross-grip.
. He also developed classroom planetaria and other teaching materials which can be found at Cape Kennedy, the Air Force Academy
, Griffith Observatory
, and many schools and universities. Later he earned a doctorate in engineering from Oxford University.
Marimba
The marimba is a musical instrument in the percussion family. It consists of a set of wooden keys or bars with resonators. The bars are struck with mallets to produce musical tones. The keys are arranged as those of a piano, with the accidentals raised vertically and overlapping the natural keys ...
virtuoso
Virtuoso
A virtuoso is an individual who possesses outstanding technical ability in the fine arts, at singing or playing a musical instrument. The plural form is either virtuosi or the Anglicisation, virtuosos, and the feminine form sometimes used is virtuosa...
, a conductor
Conducting
Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...
and promoter
Promoter (entertainment)
An entertainment promoter i.e. music, wrestling, boxing etc is a person or company in the business of marketing and promoting live events such as concerts/gigs, boxing matches, sports entertainment , festivals, raves, and nightclubs.- Business model :Promoters are typically hired as independent...
of marimba orchestra
Orchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
s, a composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, a teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...
, a designer
Designer
A designer is a person who designs. More formally, a designer is an agent that "specifies the structural properties of a design object". In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, such as consumer products, processes, laws, games and graphics, is referred to as a...
of keyboard
Keyboard instrument
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
percussion instruments, an inventor, and an engineer
Engineer
An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...
for Hughes Aircraft
Hughes Aircraft
Hughes Aircraft Company was a major American aerospace and defense contractor founded in 1932 by Howard Hughes in Culver City, California as a division of Hughes Tool Company...
.
Early career
Musser was born in PennsylvaniaPennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
and began to study the xylophone
Xylophone
The xylophone is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets...
in the 5th grade. Upon witnessing a performance of Teddy Brown
Teddy Brown
Teddy Brown was an American entertainer who spent the latter part of his life performing in Britain. He was born Abraham Himmelbrand in 1900, and first played in the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, but moved to the field of popular music in the 1920s.He was noted for his rotund appearance,...
playing marimba with the Earl Fuller
Earl Fuller
Earl Fuller was an American society dance band leader, drummer and pianist.His group "Earl Fuller's Rector Novelty Orchestra" was a regular feature at Rector's restaurant in New York City. Their records were released on Victor Records, Columbia Records, Emerson Records and Edison Records and sold...
's Rector Novelty Orchestra, Musser was inspired to study with Brown's former teacher, Philip Rosenweig. Musser soon became recognized as a virtuoso in his own right, performing as a soloist, with orchestras, and in an early Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
Vitaphone
Vitaphone
Vitaphone was a sound film process used on feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects produced by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930. Vitaphone was the last, but most successful, of the sound-on-disc processes...
film.
Design Work
Musser's first major project as a designer was a unique instrument called the Marimba-Celeste, built at the J.C. Deagan factory in ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. Essentially, the instrument combined a marimba and a vibraphone
Vibraphone
The vibraphone, sometimes called the vibraharp or simply the vibes, is a musical instrument in the struck idiophone subfamily of the percussion family....
, with a built-in amplification system for the lower marimba keys. Musser toured with this instrument between 1927 and 1930.
Some time between 1949 and 1950, Musser designed and built a predecessor to the drum machine
Drum machine
A drum machine is an electronic musical instrument designed to imitate the sound of drums or other percussion instruments. They are used in a variety of musical genres, not just purely electronic music...
, alliteratively called the "Musser Maestro Marimba Metron," or more simply the "Rhythm Machine." The machine, used by Musser to accompany performances and lessons, measures 1.5 feet wide and about 3 feet square. Manufactured using vacuum tube
Vacuum tube
In electronics, a vacuum tube, electron tube , or thermionic valve , reduced to simply "tube" or "valve" in everyday parlance, is a device that relies on the flow of electric current through a vacuum...
technology, it plays 13 electronically generated rhythmic accompaniments such as the bolero
Bolero
Bolero is a form of slow-tempo Latin music and its associated dance and song. There are Spanish and Cuban forms which are both significant and which have separate origins.The term is also used for some art music...
, waltz
Waltz
The waltz is a ballroom and folk dance in time, performed primarily in closed position.- History :There are several references to a sliding or gliding dance,- a waltz, from the 16th century including the representations of the printer H.S. Beheim...
, rhumba, cha-cha
Cha-Cha
Cha-Cha, Cha Cha, ChaCha or Chacha may refer to:*Cha-cha-cha , the name of a dance of Cuban origin*"Cha Cha" , a 2006 song by Latin artist, Chelo*Cha Cha , a 1978 album by Herman Brood & His Wild Romance...
, tango
Tango (ballroom)
Ballroom Tango is a ballroom dance that branched away from its original Argentine roots by allowing European, American, Hollywood, and competitive influences into the style and execution of the dance....
, samba
Samba
Samba is a Brazilian dance and musical genre originating in Bahia and with its roots in Brazil and Africa via the West African slave trade and African religious traditions. It is recognized around the world as a symbol of Brazil and the Brazilian Carnival...
, and beguine. In addition to the pre-set loops, percussion sounds can be activated using push-botton controls, which show wear from Musser operating them with his mallets while playing.
Musser's final design project was the Celestaphone, an instrument which served to merge Musser's interests in outer space
Outer space
Outer space is the void that exists between celestial bodies, including the Earth. It is not completely empty, but consists of a hard vacuum containing a low density of particles: predominantly a plasma of hydrogen and helium, as well as electromagnetic radiation, magnetic fields, and neutrinos....
and music. The frame and the bars were forged from 678 pounds of meteorites from Musser's own collection, which he began gathering from all over the world in 1936. In design and appearance it most closely resembles a pedal glockenspiel
Glockenspiel
A glockenspiel is a percussion instrument composed of a set of tuned keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. In this way, it is similar to the xylophone; however, the xylophone's bars are made of wood, while the glockenspiel's are metal plates or tubes, and making it a metallophone...
.
The Marimba Orchestra
One of the most notable of Musser's contributions to the world of percussion is his work as a conductor and promoter of large marimba orchestras. One of the first of such groups was a 25 piece, all-girl marimba ensemble for a Paramount PicturesParamount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
event in Chicago. In 1933 at the Century of Progress International Exhibition
Century of Progress
A Century of Progress International Exposition was the name of a World's Fair held in Chicago from 1933 to 1934 to celebrate the city's centennial. The theme of the fair was technological innovation...
in Chicago, Musser conducted a marimba orchestra of 100 players. A special marimba, the "Century of Progress Model" was designed by Musser and produced by the Deagan company. Most of Musser's future marimba orchestras would follow a similar model. That is, Musser would select players, arrange and write the music, rehearse and conduct the orchestra, and design a special instrument for the group. The largest group Musser assembled was an orchestra of 300 marimbas appearing at the Chicago Railroad Fair in 1950.
The Deagan Company
Musser joined the J.C. Deagan company in 1930 as manager of the mallet instrument division. Perhaps the most significant development of Deagan instruments under his leadership was in the area tuning. Marimbas and xylophones to this point had a reputation for sounding "out of tune" due to certain inherent features of their design in the absence of modern acoustical theoryAcoustics
Acoustics is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of all mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician while someone working in the field of acoustics...
. Musser was a member of the Acoustical Society of America
Acoustical Society of America
The Acoustical Society of America is an international scientific society dedicated to increasing and diffusing the knowledge of acoustics and its practical applications.-History:...
and the Society for the Advancement of Science
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for the...
. He understood Fourier's theorem and the applications of that theorem to the tuning
Musical tuning
In music, there are two common meanings for tuning:* Tuning practice, the act of tuning an instrument or voice.* Tuning systems, the various systems of pitches used to tune an instrument, and their theoretical bases.-Tuning practice:...
of a marimba bar. This understanding allowed Musser and the technicians at Deagan to tune not just the fundamental, but also the harmonics of the bar, creating a clear and unmuddled pitch
Pitch (music)
Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...
.
Musser Marimbas
Following World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Musser left the Deagan Company to start his own firm, Musser Marimbas, Inc. Unfortunately, business accumen was not one of Musser's strengths, and the company was shortly sold to Lyons Band Instrument Manufacturers in 1956. Today, Musser marimbas are a division of the Ludwig
Ludwig-Musser
Ludwig-Musser is a drum and percussion instrument manufacturer that is part of the Conn-Selmer division of Steinway Musical Instruments.The first product made by the Ludwig brothers, William and Theobaldner , was a bass drum pedal capable of playing faster beats than was typical of products of the...
company. Musser's design work, from the bars to the frame, refined and standardized the marimba such as we know it today.
Northwestern
Musser founded the marimba studies program at Northwestern UniversityNorthwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
, the first of its kind, and headed the department from 1942 until 1952. There he instructed many outstanding marimba artists and teachers, including Vida Chenoweth
Vida Chenoweth
Vida Chenoweth was the first professional solo classical marimbist. Also a noted ethnomusicologist and linguist, she was inducted into The Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1985 for her contributions to those three fields....
.
Compositions
Musser's work as a composer spanned his entire career, though much of that work has been lost. As of 1941 he had published fifty-three works, including piano solos, sacred music, and arrangements for marimba and vibraphone. The only Musser originals that survive today are: Etude Op. 6, # 8 (Nature Boy), Etude Op. 6, #9 (B Major), Etude Op. 6, #10 (C Major), Etude Op. 11, #4, Prelude Op. 11, #7 (D Major-ish). Those pieces remain standard repertoire for students and professionals alike. Musser assigned an opus numberOpus number
An Opus number , pl. opera and opuses, abbreviated, sing. Op. and pl. Opp. refers to a number generally assigned by composers to an individual composition or set of compositions on publication, to help identify their works...
to 10 works at a time, and then began a new set. Since we know of works up to opus 11, it can safely be assumed that over 100 works have been lost. Musser was known to be somewhat disorganized and careless in certain matters, and with his etudes he would simply write one for a student, hand out the original, and think nothing more of it. Two of Musser's other surviving works are arrangements from his marimba orchestras. Rosales' "Bolero" from the 1933 Century of Progress Orchestra, and Saint-Saens' "Piano Concerto no. 2" from a 1942 performance by a 160-piece marimba orchestra at Soldier's Field in Chicago.
The Musser Grip
Musser developed the Musser grip, a new technique for playing the marimba with four mallets that differed significantly from the already existing cross grip (see Burton gripBurton grip
The Burton grip is a method of holding two mallets in each hand in order to play a mallet percussion instrument, such as a marimba or a vibraphone, using four mallets at once...
). The musser grip allowed for greater independence between individual mallets, and would later be modified into its modern form by Leigh Howard Stevens
Leigh Howard Stevens
Leigh Howard Stevens is a marimba artist best known for developing, codifying, and promoting the Stevens technique or Musser-Stevens grip, a method of independent four-mallet marimba performance based on the Musser grip...
.
This heading doesn't make sense since Gary Burton wasn't born until 1943. Before that, the older technique was known as Cross-grip.
Engineering/Astronomy
Musser entered into a career as a scientist after leaving Northwestern in the early 50's. He moved to Southern California in and began to do work in astronomy for Hughes and for NASANASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
. He also developed classroom planetaria and other teaching materials which can be found at Cape Kennedy, the Air Force Academy
Air force academy
An air force academy or air academy is a national institution that provides initial officer training, possibly including undergraduate level education, to air force officer cadets who air preparting to be commissioned officers in a national air force...
, Griffith Observatory
Griffith Observatory
Griffith Observatory is in Los Angeles, California, United States. Sitting on the south-facing slope of Mount Hollywood in L.A.'s Griffith Park, it commands a view of the Los Angeles Basin, including downtown Los Angeles to the southeast, Hollywood to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest...
, and many schools and universities. Later he earned a doctorate in engineering from Oxford University.