On Oct 21, 2005, at 10:57 AM, John Bell wrote:
I've occasionally seen it, for the very lowest notes, but I'm sure you're right that players don't like it. And it's doubly confusing since the old German custom was to write the part a tone up (rather than a ninth) in the bass clef.
This seems to come up annually on this list. The use of bass clef for bcl. is not "old" (in the sense of antiquated) and not limited to Germany. It is current, standard usage in all the German-speaking lands, commonplace in the Slavic countries and in Scandinavia, and occasionally to be encountered even in England and the Netherlands. Any professional player (at least in the classical world) must be as conversant with this clef as a bassoonist must be with the tenor clef, since it appears in huge chunks of the standard repertoire.
Anyone, anywhere, who writes a bass clef in a bass clarinet part will be understood to be using the German system, and the player will automatically read *the entire part* one step up, rather than up a ninth. NOTA BENE: In the German system, the bcl. transposes up a second *even in the treble clef.* Mixing the two systems is just plain wrong--though heaven knows it is one of the most common notation errors among professionals, most notoriously in _The Rite of Spring_.
Moral: if you want the bcl to sound up a ninth, do not under any circumstances write a bass clef for it.
Andrew Stiller Kallisti Music Press http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
