At 4:10 AM -0400 10/13/12, David H. Bailey wrote: > >I am so glad this discussion has gone on this long -- all this >discussion of mezzo-soprano clef (c on the 2nd line) has given me an >epiphany. I've never fully understood the use of the clefs for >transposition, but now I have learned that reading an F Horn part >(already transposed) as if it had a mezzo-soprano clef will give me the >concert pitch without me having to do mental gymnastics.
One of the earliest tenors with New York Pro Musica was Arthur Squires, when the ensemble got started back in the early '50s. They read a lot of their early music from either copies of original manuscripts or from scholarly editions that had kept the original clefs from early manuscripts, as did everyone at that time since that was all that was available. But they also adjusted the pitch at which they performed the music, because for one thing they used women's voices which the Church had forbidden for centuries and simply were not used or written for. Arthur had (no doubt still has!) dead perfect pitch, and simply could not sing at a pitch different from what was on the page without its driving him nuts! But since he had no problem reading any of the 9 movable clefs he transposed mentally, adjusting the accidentals as needed. (Much like a bari sax player reading from a bass clef part and mentally adjusting the accidentals and key signature.) And he had no trouble reading the clefs because in those days EVERYONE in early music had to be able to read them and learned to do so. Knowing the original clefs is also a valuable clue to the range covered by each part, since instrumentation was very seldom indicated but was left up to the discretion of the band leader or choir director and who he had available on any given day. Both scribes and typesetters chose the clefs that kept most of each part within the staff rather than using lots of ledger lines, awkward to hand copy with the way they cut their pens and calling for special pieces of type in early music printing. And that's the problem. You have to be able to read the clefs in the first place. Once you can, then yes, they can be a great help in transposing. But I don't think our music educators in the U.S. have ever considered it necessary or worthwhile to teach them. Bach never wrote for transposing woodwinds at all. (The brass instruments came out of an entirely different tradition.) He simply used the best choice of the 9 clefs. In fact as late as Brahms it was usual to write SATB choral music using soprano, alto, tenor (all C clefs) and bass or baritone (F on the 3rd line) clefs. That (and a lot of OTHER questions regarding pitch standards, to be sure!) makes it difficult for anyone to read or play from the public domain Bach Gesellschaft edition, because they kept all the original clefs. The one transposition that still throws me is Clarinet in A. It's a third transposition, and the clefs are all a third apart, so there should be an easy way to do it, but I've never discovered it. (OK, I just worked through it once again, and soprano clef does it nicely. Which means I just am not very good at thinking in soprano clef (C on the 1st line)!!!) But Bach used it every day both for his soprano choral parts and for a lot of the right-hand parts in his keyboard music. John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music School of Performing Arts & Cinema College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences 290 College Ave., Blacksburg, Virginia 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[email protected]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html "Machen Sie es, wie Sie wollen, machen Sie es nur schön." (Do it as you like, just make it beautiful!) --Johannes Brahms _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
