Clefs and transposition [was: Re: [proposal] easy triplets and tuplets - Draft 3]

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

On 10/09/2012 05:23 PM, Janek Warchoł wrote:
> As for transposing clefs, i play guitar a bit myself, and i have once
> typeset a piece using both G and G_8 clefs.  Maybe it was a bad idea,
> but for me it was perfectly fine.

Yes, definitely a bad idea.  Use 8va. .... brackets instead when you want to 
send everything up an octave like that.  It was fine for _you_ because you wrote 
it and knew what you wanted anyway, but it would have probably been confusing 
for anyone else who had to read it, at least at initial glance.

Anyway, _most_ of the time you shouldn't need to do any such octave shifts -- 
it's only at the very extreme upper end of the instrumental register (and 
sometimes lower, e.g. on piano) that you would bother.

> It seems that our opinions on this subject are totally opposite.
> While i definitely agree that the important thing is that performers
> don't have to worry about this issue, in my opinion the *only* way to
> ensure this is to state clef transpositions explicitely.  After all,
> it doesn't cost you anything to write them.

No, the only way to do it is to ensure that you have a well-defined standard for 
how music is written for a given instrument, and ensure that composers, 
publishers etc. know these standards and use them.  To a large extent that's 
what happens, but there are grey areas round some edges, usually where you're 
seeing new areas of technique or even new instruments introduced.

Insisting on a strict employment of \treble or \treble_8 is in practice a good 
way to increase the number of grey areas rather than reduce them, because it 
increases the likelihood of multiple different non-uniform practices, and also 
simply of errors -- errors in writing the part, and errors in playing it, 
because \treble and \treble_8 are not visually distinct enough for a musician 
reading the piece in real time.

In any case the player shouldn't have to face the question because as a matter 
of course they should never encounter two clefs an octave apart in the same 
piece -- you change clef to change the _staff_ pitches, not the relative octave.

> For me, what we currently have is a holly mess.  There are some areas
> where ambiguity can be your goal, but i don't see how it could be
> here.  In my opinion it is *infinitely* better to write down the
> information than to leave it to the performer to guess it based on
> tradition.

It's not just "tradition" -- there are well-defined notational standards for 
different instruments' notation, particularly for pitch, which you can find in 
any decent orchestration manual.

The problems happen when composers or arrangers don't follow the rules, which 
unfortunately happens more frequently than you'd like, and which to some extent 
is exacerbated by reliance on music notation software (i.e., trusting that the 
computer knows what it's doing rather than understanding and properly 
researching the notational standards).

> For example, despite the fact that i'm an amateur musician (guitar &
> voice), i had learned note names quickly.  However, for *many years* i
> had no idea that some instruments are transposed.  Had i tried to play
> a transposed instrument, i would play exactly what was written.  When
> i learned that some instruments are transposed *and that the
> transposition isn't marked in the notation*, i felt it was outrageous.

But it _is_ usually marked in the notation -- you'll get a part marked for 
"Clarinet in B flat" or "Trumpet in D" or whatever, which tells you what the 
transposition is.  Albeit in some modern parts the instrument's transposition is 
so standardized (e.g. alto sax is _always_ in E flat, though historically they 
existed in F and other keys) that it isn't always written, but if you're a 
composer, conductor or arranger it's reasonable to expect you to have read up on 
the standards and to know them by heart.

>   I still believe it was a foolish idea to start notating transposing
> instruments in this way, i.e. without any indication next to the clef
> (no idea who started it, though :P).

You might want to read some of Schoenberg's writings :-)  He made some proposals 
for an alternative staff and clef system designed to better cope with the trend 
towards atonal music.  (Many of the potential ambiguities of transposition 
actually resolve rather simply in a tonal setup.)

I think his ideas probably failed because apart from the weight of lock-in, the 
main purpose of _individual_ instrumental notation is to make the easiest 
possible mapping between what is written on the page and what the player has to 
do.  In the case of brass instruments that mapping basically needs to be common 
to the overtone series of the instrument.  In the case of woodwind instruments, 
the notation needs to be common to the fingering -- whether I'm playing clarinet 
in B flat, A, C or E flat, or bass clarinet, or alto clarinet, or basset horn, 
if I see a written middle C I know to put down the thumb and first 3 fingers of 
my left hand.  I don't have to worry about the mapping between notation and 
fingering changing depending on what particular member of the clarinet family 
I'm playing, and that's much more important for effective performance than the 
conductor or composer having to learn a number of fairly simple rules for 
notation and transposition.

> For example, the horn transposition can be either a fourth or a fifth.
>   For me this is nonsense: you want to play from some old score, but
> you have to ask a musicologist to be sure what the notes actually are
> :(

Yes, but it's generally not so ambiguous as you might think because which 
transposition it is depends on the clef -- notes are written a 5th above 
sounding pitch in the treble clef, a 4th below sounding pitch in the bass clef, 
and you shouldn't switch clef within the part (indeed, if I recall right, 
historically the use of these different notational standards fell along national 
lines, so ambiguity was still less in practice).

In any case, the modern standard notation is treble clef, sounding a 5th below 
written pitch.  You do sometimes get errors in modern scores because some daft 
composer decides there are too many ledger lines and that a bass clef would make 
it easier -- it doesn't.  (Especially because these composers may or may not 
change the transposition when they change the clef.)

There's actually a similar notational divide for the bass clarinet, with French 
traditional practice being to notate in treble clef sounding a major 12th down, 
and German being to use bass clef sounding a major 2nd below what is written. 
Some pieces switch between the two, and this can actually be useful when you're 
switching between extended passages in the lowest register, and passages in the 
higher register.

> I hope that this email hadn't become too sarcastic or disparaging :/

Well, I don't perceive it as such from you and I hope it doesn't seem so from 
me.  I just think that you may be taking a too theoretically idealistic view of 
what would bring precision or reduce ambiguity for performing musicians ... ;-)

By the way -- I mentioned that music software sometimes causes rather than 
solves problems -- here's a good example which is one of the most common 
bugbears of modern performers.  You'll get some composer engraving a piece in 
Finale or Sibelius, they'll be doing note entry in concert pitch because that's 
what's easiest and then at the end they'll turn on the automated transposition 
and extract the parts.  And then the poor clarinettist or saxophonist or 
whatever opens up his or her part to find it encrusted with B- and E-sharps and 
F- and C-flats because the default transposition style is tonal and considers 
these relationships important.  It becomes even more fun when you have trills 
involved, with sharp or natural or flat signs above them, and which _don't_ get 
rewritten when you do the transposition ... :-)