Clef

(from Lat. clavis: ‘key’).

In Western notation the sign placed at the beginning of a staff to denote the pitch of one of its lines, and hence of the other lines. Apart from instances in theoretical writings of the late 9th century, clefs were first systematically used in functional liturgical manuscripts of the 11th century, where they take the form of simple letters. F and c clefs were always the most widely used, the letters soon becoming formalized to take on their early shapes as ‘clefs’. The g clef became increasingly common in the 15th century, when the range of part-writing expanded upwards. With the general adoption of F (for the left hand) and g (for the right) clefs for keyboard music at the end of the 18th century, the c clef became less common. The F and g clefs came to be known as the ‘bass clef’ and ‘treble clef’ respectively.

For the sake of clarity, italic letters are used (exclusively in this article) to represent the pitches as named by Guido of Arezzo (see Pitch nomenclature, fig.1); a figure after the letter-name of a clef denotes the staff line on which it stands, counting from the lowest (e.g. the modern treble clef, g2, the modern bass clef, F4).

1. Early theoretical writing and Guido of Arezzo.

The use of a line with a sign to indicate its pitch is first found in the treatise Musica enchiriadis (c860 or c890: see Musica enchiriadis, Scolica enchiriadis, §4), where a dasian sign precedes each line of a staff in several examples (see facs. of F-VAL 337, ff.44v–45r in Smits van Waesberghe, 1969, p.105; facs. of CH–E 79, pp.7 and 25 in Stäblein, p.225; see also Daseian notation). These pitch letters were not used outside theoretical writing.

Another system of alphabetical notation, using roman letters, was used in many progressive centres in the 11th century (the tonary F-MOf H.159, from St Bénigne, Dijon, before 1031, is a celebrated early example; it uses the letters from ‘a’ to ‘p’; facs. in PalMus, 1st ser., viii, 1901–5/R). Such letters were adopted by Guido of Arezzo, whose treatise Aliae regulae (GerbertS, ii, 34) of about 1030 recommended using a staff with lines a 3rd apart, one or more of which should be prefaced by a letter (littera) to denote its pitch (Guido’s alphabetic series ran from A–G, a–g, aa–ee; the term ‘clavis’ is post-Guidonian). He seems to have preferred to use a red line understood to be F and a yellow line understood to be c, rather than letters. F and c were singled out by Guido because of their frequency in plainchant (GerbertS, ii, 30; CSM, iv, 1955, p.207); their position as upper notes of a semitone was also crucial (which was presumably the reason why English scribes used or clefs without a letter-clef: see below). Both the letter-clef system and the coloured-line system (which is also a ‘key’ to pitch) came into use throughout most of Europe in the next two centuries (except for conservative centres in German-speaking areas).

2. Plainchant and early polyphony.

F and c are the clefs most commonly found in surviving chant manuscripts (see Notation, §III, 1(iv)). Smits van Waesberghe (1951) gave as a sequence from commonest to rarest: F, c, f, C, D, a, g, e, gamma, b ( or quadratum sign). They were often used in conjunction with coloured lines ruled between or superimposed on the dry-point lines of the staff: for example, the 12th-century troper from St Evroult, Normandy, uses a red F line (fig.1a), a green c line, and D, a and e clefs (colour facs. in Stäblein, p.119; the monochrome facs. in Parrish, pl.VII, shows a page of the manuscript where a green line is painted in the C space of the top staff, and later a red line painted in the f space). The Γ clef (Gk. G or gamma; the note was solmized as gam-ut) appears in I-BV VI 34 (ff.24v, 126r, 129v; facs. in PalMus, 1st ser., xv, 1925/R). Scribes might use only one clef or more, perhaps one for each line (fig.1b, and also A-Gu 807, facs. in PalMus, 1st ser., xix, 1955/R; see also Smits van Waesberghe, 1969, p.111, and Stäblein, p.153). There were few regional preferences, but there was an English idiosyncrasy of using or the quadratum sign alone (see W.H. Frere: Graduale sarisburiense, 1894; Antiphonale sarisburiense, 1901–25; PalMus, 1st ser., iii, 1892, pl.196, from St Albans, and xii, 1922R; Parrish, pl.XIX; Stäblein, pp.127, 159). Thus the last three folios of GB-Lbl 36881 were probably bound to the rest (a Catalan manuscript) by an English bibliophile or librarian.

With an F clef on the second or third line of a four-line staff, the range A–d was available to a medieval scribe without the need for leger lines; a c clef on the second line increased the range to aa. Few chants include notes outside this range (some sequences, such as Fulgens preclara, reach dd, for which a scribe who had otherwise used orthodox F and c clefs would write a g clef; the Beneventan examples of a Γ clef cited above include Fulgens preclara, which is notated an octave lower than usual). The more extended range of individual voice parts and of the combined parts in polyphonic music of the early 13th century led to the general adoption of a five-line staff. Perhaps because much of the music consisted of a part or parts added above a plainchant or other pre-existing melody, it fell into the range covered by the c clef. The g clef is found simultaneously with c (perhaps F as well) in Aquitanian sources of polyphony up to about 1200 (fig.1c), but not in the Parisian and related sources of the next century. The F clef was sometimes used in these later sources for plainchant cantus firmi, out of respect for the traditional plainchant notation; only in D-W 677 does it occur elsewhere (f.110 [101] for Eclypsim patitur, a lament for Geoffrey, son of Henry II of England; also momentarily in the succeeding piece, which hails Richard I’s accession). English sources of polyphony also use alone for a clef (D-W 677, f.67v [59v], fasc.6 and esp. fasc.11; see also H.E. Wooldridge: Early English Harmony, i, 1897, pls.33, 35, 36).

3. Clefs and pitch.

The choice of clef and its position on the staff for the first three centuries after Guido appears usually to have depended on the range and tonality of the melody, allowing for it to be written without accidentals (except for the flat or quadratum signs in the b space). This was irrespective of the pitch at which it may have sounded, if a pitch standard were understood to be in operation. Thus a Cistercian ordinance of the 12th century (see S.R. Marosszeki: Les origines du chant Cistercien, viii, 1952, p.62) restricted melodies to a range of ten notes, but not to ten stated pitch names. (Modern Roman chant books still proclaim that the pitch of their melodies is not absolute: see Liber usualis, 1961, p.xix.)

It has been thought that the appropriate absolute pitch of performance of some repertories of choral music between the 15th and 17th centuries is discernible from the clefs used for the individual voices: the written tessitura of the music was not the same as the performing tessitura, but the combination of clefs chosen encoded the required adjustment. (For an account of the arguments for this see Chiavette.) Because the range of a part rarely exceeded a 10th, as in music of the previous centuries, it was usually possible to notate the part on a five-line staff without leger lines. The question arises as to whether the recurrent use of a particular set of clefs was ever more than a result of persistent writing for the same voices in the same way: in other words, whether it was not voice ranges rather than clef combinations that were standardized. Three instances may be cited of situations where some adjustment of pitch to an agreed standard may have taken place in performance: but a ‘clef code’ need not have been in operation to control this adjustment:

(i) A composer might notate a piece without leger lines or key signature and with as few accidentals as possible, that is, regardless of any pitch standard. This might suggest that pieces written with key signatures of two or more flats were notated with a definite pitch standard in mind, for example the Gloria by Damett (G-Lbl 57950, f.9v, ed. in CMM, xlvii/2. p.13: ex.1) and about half the pieces in the Cantiones sacrae of 1575 by Tallis and Byrd. (Exx.1–5 show the range of each voice and indicate the original clef below. The clefs on the staff bear no direct relationship to the original clefs.)

(ii) The composer might include a cantus firmus at its traditional written pitch. For instance, in Josquin’s Missa de Beata Virgine (Werken: Missen, iii: 30–31, 125) and Palestrina’s Missa de beata (Opera omnia, iv, 1) the presence of cantus firmi of widely differing tessitura as traditionally notated results in movements of widely differing written tessitura, though of orthodox range (ex.2).

(iii) It is possible that conventional written tessituras of an earlier period were later abandoned when choral range expanded. Thus approximately two-thirds of the pieces of the Old Hall Manuscript that are notated in score are for three different voices (usual clefs and ranges in ex.3). The addition of another voice (with the g clef to notate it) is found in GB-Cmc Pepys 1236 (ex.4a); and this written tessitura survives into the Eton Choirbook, for example the Magnificat settings by Nesbett and Kellyk (ex.4b); but the other four Magnificat settings (ex.4c) avoid using clefs on outer lines and use the F clef again.

Few repertories have been investigated for data of this type; and any discussion of written tessitura should take into account the possible presence or absence of a pitch standard in the minds of composers or performers of the period, regardless of its relationship to modern standards (see Pitch).

4. The modern system.

A few exceptional examples warn of unorthodox written tessitura: the D4 clef used in the bass book (GB-Lbl 17805) of the Gyffard Partbooks (Lbl 17802–5) for Tallis’s short mass (f.66v; ed. in TCM, vi, 31; ex.5); the Γ clef in Pierre de La Rue’s Requiem (facs. in Wolf, i, 387); and the ff clef of the Mulliner Book (Lbl 30513; ed. in MB, i, nos.48, 113). But otherwise the history of the clef from the 14th century is that of the F, c and g clefs. Their shape underwent considerable stylization. The two horizontals of the letter F became two dots as early as the 12th century (fig.2a; see PalMus, 1st ser., iii, 1892, pl.168; Stäblein, pp.121, 141), and in the 14th century the clef was commonly written as a long with two semibreves or minims to its right, one above the other. In the 15th century these three elements became void, like the note heads of the time. This type of F clef was adopted by Petrucci and other early Italian printers (fig.2b). The F clef made of a reversed C plus two dots was preferred by some Netherlandish and German printers, and is occasionally found in manuscript sources (e.g. NL-L 1439; facs. in Besseler and Gülke, p.117; fig.2c). The two horizontals of the c clef also became void and by 1500 were commonly written as two breves, one above the other, between two vertical lines. The upper flourish of the modern g clef is found from the 16th century (fig.3) and may be a stylized S[ol] (deriving from the solmization g sol re ut).

Whereas keyboard scores usually catered for the wide range of a part by increasing the number of lines of the staff (to eight or more), retaining c clefs, parts of high written tessitura for monophonic instruments or voices normally used a g clef. In the 17th and 18th centuries the French preferred g1 to g2; Couperin used both to differentiate French and Italian styles in Le Parnasse ou l’Apothéose de Lully (1725). The g clef was adopted generally for the higher staff of keyboard scores in the late 18th century (e.g. in C.P.E. Bach’s three sets of keyboard sonatas ‘für Kenner und Liebhaber’, 1779–81). This appears to have resulted eventually in lack of familiarity with the c clef, which from the late 19th century was gradually replaced in choral scores and opera solo parts by octave g clefs, written as in ex.6.

The use of three different clefs (F, c, g) on different lines of the staff has caused dissatisfaction since at least the 17th century, and prompted schemes of rationalization. Most of these have suggested the permanent association of a pitch name with a single place on the staff, different octaves being catered for by increased use of various octave signs. The earliest such scheme appears to be that put forward by Thomas Salmon in his Essay to the Advancement of Musick by Casting Away the Perplexity of Different Cliffs and Uniting All Sorts of Musick in One Universal Character (1672/R). Practising musicians have, however, persisted with the traditional system (for the others see Wolf, ii, 339–48), which at the most includes nine types of clef:

Of these only g2, c3, c4 and F4 appear in normal modern usage.

See also Notation, §III, 3(i), 4(v) and Staff.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. Wolf: Handbuch der Notationskunde (Leipzig, 1913–19)

P. Wagner: ‘Aus der Frühzeit des Liniensystems’, AMw, viii (1926), 259–76

J. Smits van Waesberghe: ‘The Musical Notation of Guido of Arezzo’, MD, v (1951), 15–53 [Eng. trans. of pp.47–85 of De musico paedagogico et theoretico Guidone Aretino, 1953]

C. Parrish: The Notation of Medieval Music (New York, 1957)

S. Hermelink: Dispositiones modorum (Tutzing, 1960)

J. Smits van Waesberghe: Musikerziehung, Musikgeschichte in Bildern, iii/3 (Leipzig, 1969)

H. Besseler and P. Gülke: Schriftbild der mehrstimmigen Musik, Musikgeschichte in Bildern, iii/5 (Leipzig, 1972)

B. Stäblein: Schriftbild der einstimmigen Musik, Musikgeschichte in Bildern, iii/4 (Leipzig, 1975)

R. Stewart: ‘Voice Types in Josquin’s Music’, TVNM, xxxv (1985), 97–189, 190–93

R. Bowers: English Church Polyphony: Singers and Sources from the 14th century to the 17th (Aldershot, 1999)

DAVID HILEY