I'm looking at the Scherzo of Beethoven's 3rd Sonata for Cello and Piano (an old Peters edition). Measures 33 to 75 are all in tenor clef. If they were in bass clef the passage would look weirdly high: almost the whole passage would be above the staff. If you put it into treble clef there would be a lot of notes below the staff, which isn't good (see above).
Another interesting example is the 1st movement of the 4th of the Beethoven sonatas. Here most of the introductory Andante is written in tenor clef, but with a couple of short excursions into bass clef. Even if this might seem to contradict the principle of not changing clefs too often, here it is really the best solution. if you write the whole passage in tenor clef you are forced to put notes below the staff, and the the passage is just too high to fit well in bass clef.
It's all a question of habit. With the three clefs, cellists rarely see more than three ledger lines above the staff and two below. Violinists are used to seeing many more ledger lines above the staff and will prefer things this way: several times the violins in the orchestra here in Mannheim have shown me a passage written with 8va signs and asked me to re-notate it with ledger lines.
Michael Cook
On 14 avr. 05, at 21:24, Darcy James Argue wrote:
Hey Jef,
Thanks -- the cello question is actually more interesting to me. While I'm not a cellist, I personally don't see much point in using tenor clef very often in cello parts, since, as you say, bass clef is fine up to around G4 -- at which point, why switch to tenor clef when you're already up in the middle of the treble clef? And, as you say, "as soon as it hits even one C(5)" -- treble clef.
So basically, tenor clef is useful for parts that lie mostly above G4 but not above B4. That's a rather limited set of circumstances. I've usually found myself just staying in bass clef up to A4, and then switching straight to treble clef at B4 and above. No complaints so far. It seems desirable to me as a general principle to limit the number of clef changes in any part, and to only switch to a new clef when absolutely necessary. Going back and forth between *three* different clefs in a cello part seems excessive to me, even if that is the tradition. But I'm curious what others on the list think of this.
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