Re: Baritone and treble clef

[Urs Liska]

Hi David,


Am 14.02.2017 um 12:52 schrieb David Sumbler:
> On Mon, 2017-02-13 at 22:58 +0100, Simon Albrecht wrote:
>> On 13.02.2017 17:43, Kieren MacMillan wrote:
>>>> The piece I am setting can be sung by a baritone or by a mezzo-
>>>> soprano.
>>>>   In the score, therefore, there are 2 vocal staves, one for each
>>>> of the
>>>> alternative voices.  The staves contain identical music apart
>>>> from an
>>>> octave diffence in pitch and different clefs.
>>> Aside: Have you thought about just having one staff, and putting
>>> the clef modifier (i.e., subscript 8) in parentheses?
>> I agree. Baritones have no trouble whatsoever singing from treble
>> clef. 
>> I’d not even bother to put the clef modifier there, because it’s 
>> self-explanatory if you write ‘Mezzosoprano or baritone’. But that
>> may 
>> be from my personal dislike of \clef "treble_8". Historically, when 
>> people started notating tenors with treble clefs, it was transposing 
>> notation, the whole ‘octavated clef’ idea being in this case a 
>> misconception. (advanced piano notation being a different issue)
>>
>> Best, Simon

If I'm not mistaken you didn't specify what kind and era of music we are
talking about, so that might make things different.

> I am reluctant to remove the baritone line, written in bass clef, for 2
> reasons:
> 1) the piece was originally written for baritone singer, and I would
> therefore not like anyone to get the impression that the male voice is
> merely an less desirable alternative to the female voice.

Traditionally, i.e. at least in the late eighteenth and the nineteenth
century, music that was explicitly set for baritone or bass was notated
in bass clef. Music that could be equally sung by both voices (I suppose
this goes mainly (only?) for songs) are in treble clef, without any
modifier.

> 2) I may 
> be mistaken, since I am not generally involved in performing vocal
> music, but I think it would be unusual for a baritone to be expected to
> read treble clef.  I am sure that most can, but that is hardly the
> point: I used to be a flute-player, and I could easily have read my
> music in bass clef (performing the necessary 1- or 2-octave
> transpostion), but in 55 years I was never expected to.

As Phil said, you are mistaken. If you're a baritone and you want to
sing *any* of the usual suspects in Lied literature from Schubert over
Brahms to Webern you'll have treble clef most of the time, with the
exception of explicit bass songs. Even songs for tenor are usually
written in treble clef.

So if you want to indicate a part to be performed by mezzo or baritone
you'd probably want to have just a single staff with treble clef, and
something like "Mezzo or baritone" as the "instrument name".

HTH
Urs

> David
>
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