Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

(v) Clefs, staves, leger lines.

The F and C clefs, positioned so as to avoid leger lines, were supplemented from the 14th century with the G clef and a bass G or gamma clef (fixing bass G), in order to allow further exploration of the treble and bass registers without the necessity for leger lines. From the 15th century standard combinations of clefs became increasingly common in vocal music: three-part songs were often notated with a C clef on the first line for the upper voice and C clefs on the fourth line for tenor and contratenor. Later, standard combinations of three different clefs came to be used in four-part songs. In 16th-century polyphony, after Petrucci’s publications, combinations of four different clefs became more common and the combination of soprano, alto, tenor and bass clefs – that is, C clefs on the first, third and fourth lines and an F clef on the fourth line – first became standard, together with the combinations of transposed clefs, used to avoid leger lines (and obsolete by the 17th century), known as Chiavette.

From the 17th century the G clef was increasingly used, especially in instrumental notation. It occurs on the first line for violins and recorders (Lully): this practice was largely French but also occurred in Germany (Bach used it mainly for the Violino piccolo). But increasingly it came to appear on the second line, as in modern practice, for all instruments of treble range. It occurs in 17th- and 18th-century English vocal and keyboard music, for example, in the upper staves of songs notated as keyboard music (melody line and bass, without a separate staff for the keyboard right hand; for a later example of this usage, see fig.76 above). Purcell used it in vocal ensemble music for the treble line, with C clefs for alto and tenor lines. The form of the G clef found in Vinculum societatis of 1687 (see fig.75 above) occurs throughout the 18th century in English notation.

C clefs were retained in Italian 17th- and 18th-century vocal music, and in German, both scores and parts, for soprano, alto and tenor lines; they still appear in the notation of Wagner, Brahms and Schoenberg and are not wholly obsolete even today. In vocal scores both in Germany and elsewhere, however, modern practice is found as early as the beginning of the 19th century, with G clefs for soprano and alto and a G clef with octave transposition for the tenor (this notation was not however universal at that time, even in England). The C clef on the first line remained normal in German keyboard music until a remarkably late date; Mozart sometimes used it, and although Haydn and Schubert favoured the G clef, the C appears in isolated cases much later (as in fig.110, from an edition of Brahms’s organ music, where the alto clef appears occasionally so that leger lines may be avoided).

Diversity of clefs has seemed increasingly arbitrary since the 17th century, and notational reform, whether formulated theoretically or not, has generally tended to reduce the number of clefs and in consequence to be increasingly tolerant of leger lines. A single clef with octave transpositions was advocated by Juan Caramuel (Ars nova musicae, 1645–6) and Thomas Salmon (Essay to the Advancement of Musick, 1672), but these proposals did not come from the musical profession, and Salmon’s were ridiculed by Matthew Locke (fig.111, from The Present Practice of Musick Vindicated, 1673; see Baldwin and Wilson, 1970). Other unsuccessful proposals for clef reform were made by Montéclair (Principes de musique, 1736) and Lacassagne (‘Réflexions sur l’usage des clefs’ in Traité général des élémens du chant, 1766; L’uni-cléfier musical, 1768). In anticipation of modern practice, Grétry sought to eliminate all but the G and F clefs, transposing where necessary (Mémoires, ou Essais sur la musique, 1789).

In practice, notational reform has tended to abolish the C clefs, substituting G clefs with octave transpositions where necessary (mainly for the tenor voice and some wind instruments) but retaining the F clef, as in keyboard music. In the 20th century several modified forms of the G clef were introduced in order to specify transposition unambiguously where appropriate. Examples are a doubled G clef (used already by Grétry for a similar purpose), a G clef with a vestigial tenor (C) clef added to it, and a G clef with a figure 8 attached underneath. The latter version seems now to have become standard, and the 8 has been analogously added above or below both G and F clefs to signify transposition up or down an octave. (The addition of other figures for transposing instruments has been proposed, e.g. a 5 below the G clef for an english horn.) Traditional C clefs remain standard for music for the viola and trombone, and for the high registers of the cello and bassoon.

Five-line staves, used in the Middle Ages except in Italy for vocal polyphony, were used for keyboard music with C clefs by Attaingnant (1529–30), but did not become standard until the 17th century. In 16th- and 17th-century English keyboard music, pairs of six-line staves (expanded to seven or eight if the range required) remained normal; the six-line staff was not replaced by the five-line one in English keyboard music until around 1700. In The Second Book of the Harpsicord Master, 1700, six-line staves are used; in The Third Book, 1702, the pieces are ‘now plac’d on five lines, it being now the Generall way of Practice’. Modern practice generally adheres to the use of the treble and bass clefs on the upper and lower of a pair of staves; with this standardization, and with the extension during the 19th century of the range of the piano, leger lines have become increasingly common; they appear as early as 1523 in Cavazzoni’s Recerchari, motetti, canzoni. (For examples of 16th-century leger lines, see fig.119, and Leger line.) In practice more than five leger lines are seldom found, notators preferring to transpose very high or very low passages one or two octaves towards the central range and to use abbreviations such as ‘8va’ or ‘8va bassa’, except in orchestral parts. Some keyboard music since the 18th century has, however, occasionally been written on three or more staves (see §(viii) below).

The standardization of clefs since the 19th century, and their consequent predictability, has allowed notators unusual licence. Some 20th-century notation, for example, includes the simultaneous use of treble and bass clefs on a single five-line staff for notating widely-spaced strands of the texture, when there is no possibility of misunderstanding (see fig.112, from Debussy’s Voiles, from Préludes, i, 1910). Simple horizontal wedge-shapes represent the treble clef when next to the second line and the bass when next to the fourth (for further details of these and other notational licence, see Read, 1964, 2/1969, pp.59ff).

A number of notational reforms proposed since the 19th century have concerned the staff. Of these the most radical is the Klavarskribo system (fig.79), in which the staves run vertically rather than horizontally in order that the appearance of the music may more closely resemble the layout of the piano keyboard, on which the system is based; accordingly, bar-lines are horizontal. Another staff reform based on the keyboard is that of W. Steffens (1961). Other reforms have often necessitated a change in the number of lines in the staff; Equitone (fig.79) uses two lines to the octave, with notes in five possible positions relative to them: with the lines running through the notes, or tangential to them, or with the notes (touching neither of the lines) closer to one or other of the lines, or midway between them. The use of full and void notes in these positions yields 12 different possibilities to the octave, for the 12 semitones of the equal-tempered system. The Notagraph system (fig.113b) of Constance Virtue uses a seven-line staff, with the space between staves divided proportionately to permit further representation of intervals for the most part without leger lines; the staff covers an octave, the step from a line to the adjacent space representing a semitone, and different octaves are distinguished with special clefs (V, O and inverted V, variously placed).

For the use of curved staves and other devices for representing tempo fluctuations, see §(iii) above.

See also Clef and Staff.

Notation, §III, 4: Mensural notation from 1500