At 1:40 PM +0100 9/18/11, Peter Taylor wrote: >From: "John Howell" <john.how...@vt.edu> > >>Most of us >>have to make do with 5 (or only 4, in Guido's >>original chant notation). That's why movable >>clefs were invented (by Guido himself!) in the >>first place. > >As a child I once had the "brilliant" idea of using a >6-line staff, where each line and space is a >semitone, making key signatures and those d*mned >accidentals redundant. It sounded great, but when >I tried to learn it it I found even a recorder needed >a grand staff! :) > >I've enjoyed this discussion. Treble clef for tenors, >with or without the "8", seems the most natural to me, >because the voice range is similar to soprano, albeit >an octave lower. But what about altos using >treble clef? If anything, that seems more awkward than >tenors using Treble8, yet nobody complains.
Logically they should use alto clef, of course (middle C on the middle line), and historically that's exactly what WAS used before the 20th century. And so should alto sax, French horn, and viola. (Oh yeah, viola actually DOES!!) Of course we also have to remember that "alto" (Italian) or "altus" (Latin) means "high," and the original "contratenor altus" parts were for a high man's voice, not a low woman's voice. It's that old thing about women not being allowed to sing in church, thanks to one silly sentence Paul wrote in 1st Corinthians! He had a pretty poor opinion of women, it seems. 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:john.how...@vt.edu) 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 Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
