On Apr 14, 2005, at 4:41 PM, Michael Cook wrote:
A basic rule to follow for cello parts is to avoid ledger lines _below_ the staff in treble and tenor clefs: notes below the staff look like "low notes" and cellists tend to automatically move to the C-string when they see them.
I'm not at all sure this is true. As a bassoonist I see notes below the tenor staff all the time. I see them right now in the Brahms 4th 1st-bn part I'm playing in the Lower Merion Symphony. They are admittedly a bit disorienting, but they're utterly traditional, and it's my job to read them, expertly and w.o complaint. More than two ledger lines down--now that *would* be a solecism.
I recently published a piece by Lejaren Hiller (his _Minuet and Trio_) in which the cello part includes several lyrical, moving passages that are extremely high and extremely disjunct. Rather than switch clefs for single eighth notes, he fearlessly writes isolated notes as low a tenor c without leaving the treble clef. As an editor, my first reaction was to overrule him, but when I saw what the alternative would look like, I realized he was right.
Andrew Stiller Kallisti Music Press http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/
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