I'm going to have to say as an accompanist for choirs for most of the past 30 years that the treble clef (with or without the 8) is more common. I'm assuming each voice is written in a different clef. For vocal parts where the Soprano/Alto is written on one clef and the Tenor/Bass on another, then the tenor part is in bass clef. For my experience at least, I'd find it strange to accompany in 4-part voicing if the tenor part were not in the treble clef. In the small volunteer choir I direct, the lone tenor is accustomed to treble clef, but has no problem reading bass.
I think the problem lies in so many leger lines. If the tenors go too high, the amount of spacing between the alto and tenor clef becomes disproportionate to the spacing between the other clefs. That starts to look confusing and becomes a distraction. Maybe we should bring back the soprano clef for sopranos, alto for altos and tenor for tenors. That would drive everyone crazy. James Gilbert JamesGilbertMusic.com _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
