Theory: The Bach Clef
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
- Bach used a clef that we don't see today. Most people say that the soprano clef is a clef we simply don't need at all today. But if you ever want to read Bach's keyboard music as he wrote it, you have to understand that clef. We are about to go down a rabbit hole. Beginners and intermediates will not need any of this information, but perhaps even they will find what I'm about to explain interesting.
There are five different clefs called C clefs that assign the letter C to any of the five lines in the staff. They are the soprano clef, the mezzo soprano clef, the alto clef, the tenor clef, and the baritone clef.But tonight I am only going to talk about the soprano clef.
For church congregational singing, the soprano clef would have made more sense than the treble clef. Hymns rarely go above the high E so the top line of the treble clef is rarely used. On the other hand, middle C (C4) for treble voices is common.
I think that writing fewer ledger lines was sometimes very important. I'm not sure that has a practical application for treble clef versus soprano clef.
I have a new understanding now. Thank you!
Great!
Bach wrote his Die Kunst der Fuge using four different vocal clefs. I have sweat a great deal when making a guitar arrangement of Contrapunctus 1. Still have headaches after all the years.
haha, I sight read one of those once (for a page) .......... S - L - O - W - L -Y.
I would love to hear it your Bach. I visited your channel. I left a couple of comments. I absolutely love your playing.
@@garydlloyd7718 that’s very kind of you, thank you very much indeed.
Why is it so hard to read the soprano clef? If you think that where the clef points is always C, there should be no problem. All it takes is getting used to. Currently I've made it up to level 5 on ABRSM, and it took a while to get used to reading alto and tenor, but I got used to it as they're essentially the same clef. Memorize your spaces and lines and it should be no problem. C, E, G, B, D, F, A and then it just repeats. Simple!
And the problem is not understanding the system. The problem is fluency.
I went at this myself way back when while studying RCM theory. I didn't memorize names of spaces & lines, but rather when up or down intervallically from wherever middle C was. The clef looks like an arrow pointing to it. That said, it did not lead to anything like fluid and fast sight reading of piano music, because the method of reading itself was different.
It's difficult in the sense of, like you say, getting used to it. That's all as far as I'm concerned. It's just a treble clef shifted a line. It's not that difficult (for me) to visualize, but for sight-reading -- yeah, that would take probably a few months of practice. Conceptually, pretty straightforward; notation is just shifted up one line from treble.
@@pulykamell I think most of us understand the system. The problem is reading each additional clef as quickly as another one we know better.
I'd like to mention that the clef - as the name suggests - is used by almost every composer in the 18th century (up to the middle of the 19th) for the soprano in choral music.
And that's a good point about soprano clef being used in choral music. I did not mention that because I was trying to keep the video limited to about 5 minutes.
I understand intellectually why all these C clefs were used. But I find them vexing because for me they are so hard to read. I think that those of us who can read at least two different clefs are very much like people who are polylingual. For instance pianists move back and forth between treble clef and bass clef effortlessly.
Trombone players move effortlessly between bass clef and tenor clef. Violists move back and forth between alto clef and treble clef. If you are a cellist, you use bass clef for low notes, tenor clef in the mid range, and treble clef for the upper range.
Probably the best way to master different clefs is to play many instruments. I'm a brass player. My brass instrument is euphonium. I spent a lot of time exploring trombone music and cello music for additional material. So I am very familiar with tenor clef. I am very weak in alto clef, because I was never in orchestra and I never had to learn a string instrument.
@@garydlloyd7718 You forgot the conductors (what I am). A conductor must be able to read all clefs and also all transpositions. In college we had to play four-part Bach chorals in soprano, alto, tenor and bass clefs. It's just a matter of practice. By the way here in Switzerland the Euphonium players read treble clef (in B like Bass-Clarinet).
I have seen J. S. Bach's manuscripts online for some organ works where he used treble clef for the top staff instead of soprano clef.
Apparently he was so flexible that he could read just about any clef with no problem.
I use the C clef for the same reason as Bach: to avoid ledger lines. Also, different instruments have differing ranges, so what do you do? Move the clef around to avoid too many ledger lines. Try sight-reading an orchestral score with 12 staffs using only G and F clefs and you will get very inundated.
One reason I see for using different C clefs is to avoid ledger lines when writing music by hand.
However, the most important reason I see for mastering all those C clefs is to be able to instantly read any music using them. So if you are a choral conductor and you are dealing with a lot of music from the past - and probably we want to think first about the Baroque period - you have to know these clefs or you can't do your job.
If you are conducting an orchestra, you can't even process what is going on in the strings unless you are fluent in alto clef. If you don't have that, you won't be able to follow what is going on in the violas.
In addition, you won't be able to follow the cellos, the bassoons, or trombones without the tenor clef.
For the most part as pianists we don't need to read these other clefs. But if you are accompanying - and I started doing this at around the age of 14 - you can't properly follow solo instruments if you don't have a knowledge of these other clefs. And by the way, this doesn't even address the problems of transposing instruments. That is an entirely different rabbit hole.
I think that the c clef was known as the fa clef for the fa in the guidonian hexachord system. Since fa refered to both c and f it helps you place your tonic and minimize ledger lines.
@@DancingPony1966-kp1zr , did they have clefs and lines at that time, (Guido) or did that come later? I don't actually know atm off the top of my head.
Joseph Haydn, Beethoven, Michael Haydn----everybody used it back then.
My main concern at the time that I made this video was about when it was used for a keyboard music.
I studied violin in grade school & middle school, so I learned G clef. Later I taught myself piano so I needed to learn F clef. The easiest way for me to do that, was to imagine that the top line had been removed and another line had been added at the bottom, and everything moved down an octave. It took me a little while to realize that between F clef and G clef is just one imaginary ledger line "C" and that is what the Bach C clef has as its bottom line. It makes it a bit easier to transpose to different clefs, If one realizes that for every note value in every clef there is a version of that note that is written on a space and an octave away is a version of that note written on a line. So to transpose clefs, one has to just imagine the center line moving up or down one to three lines.
You are absolutely correct.
Not to mention the French violin clef; Treble G on the 1st-line of the stave.
It blows my mind that these older composers confluently read all these different clefs,
So that was the thing that showed up in my WTC score!
If the top staff looks just like treble clef but every letter is actually two letters lower, then you have the Bach Clef. The rest of the world apparently calls this the Soprano clef.
You only need one note to test it. But the brain power it takes to shift everything this way absolutely fries my brain. In all cases when dealing with this kind of music, I either have to slowly translate it and then memorize it or I have to rewrite it in a modern form.
The explanation that the soprano clef, or any other clef was employed to reduced the number of ledger is not at all supported by the evidence. The soprano clef is used for the soprano voice in Bach's cantatas and in the upper voice in the Art of the Fugue where if almost invariably necessitates more ledger lines, not less. It is used to conform to theory not practice. Similarly as a cellist I see that the tenor clef is used where an alto clef would reduce ledger lines. But the cello is a tenor, not an alto so 'systematic' thinking mandates the former over the latter. It is not logical to me.
I had something larger in mind. I was thinking of all the C clefs.
There is really very little difference between treble clef and soprano clef. But that is not at all true for the difference between both the bass clef and the treble clef in comparison to alto clef. This is also true to a lesser extent for tenor clef.
If you are writing music for viola and you are mostly using them two octaves then using alto clef definitely saves a whole bunch of ledger lines.
If you ever start writing alto clef for trombones.....
No one will play it
I thought music for violas was written using the alto clef. Or has that changed?
I'm not a viola player but as far as I know you are correct.
Viola is called “Alto” in French
Could you maybe do unit on the guidonian hexachords that Bach used and how they fit into the c clef?
ruclips.net/video/IRDDT1uSrd0/видео.html
This goes into the subject in great depth.
@@garydlloyd7718 This is an excellent sourse.
I see it
I don't know what you mean by that comment but I very much enjoyed visiting your channel and hearing your music.
I sort of find them fun.
Are you talking about all the C clefs?
@@garydlloyd7718 clefs in general.
I've tried reading it. I can't.
It's basically the same as Clarinet in A in treble clef, a third lower
That's different. Clarinet uses treble clef. But each pitch you see on the page is played down a minor third if you are playing A clarinet. So if you see C on the page you will hear A. That's why we call it a transposing instrument.
You have to start off by changing the letter one note at a time.
@@garydlloyd7718 Yes, but you can use it as a hint. The c' in soprano clef is e' in treble clef which becomes again c' when you ignore the accidentals.