A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Granjon, Robert

GRANJON, Robert. Born about the beginning of the 16th century at Paris, a type-founder who was one of the first to introduce round notes instead of square and lozenge-shaped ones, and at the same time to suppress the ligatures and signs of proportion, which made the notation of the old music so difficult to read—and thus to simplify the art. His efforts, however, appear to have met with little or no success. His first publications are said to be dated 1523, and the first work printed on his new system, 1559, at which time he had left Paris for Lyons; he was at Rome in 1582, where he printed the first edition of Guidetti's Directorium, having been called to Rome by the Pope in order to out the capital letters of a Greek alphabet.

Whether he or Briard of Bar-le-duc was the first to make the improvements mentioned above is uncertain. Briard's Carpentras (printed in the new style) was published at Avignon in 1532, but Granjon appears to have made his invention and obtained letters patent for it many years before he had an opportunity of exercising it. See Fétis for more details.

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