Clef

The ten clefs placed on lines (two are equivalent) have different names based on the tessitura for which they are best suited.

Instruments that use the treble clef include violin, flute, oboe, cor anglais, all clarinets, all saxophones, horn, trumpet, cornet, vibraphone, xylophone, mandolin, recorder, bagpipe and guitar.

A C-clef on the fifth line creates a staff with identical notes to the baritone clef, but this variant is rare.

Double bass, bass guitar, and contrabassoon sound an octave lower than the written pitch; some scores show an "8" beneath the clef for these instruments to differentiate from instruments that sound at the actual written pitch (see "Octave clefs" below).

It occasionally appears in keyboard music (for example, in Brahms's Organ Chorales and John Cage's Dream for piano).

It is used for the viola da gamba (rarely, and mostly in German scores; otherwise the alto clef is used) and for upper ranges of bass-clef instruments such as the bassoon, cello, euphonium, double bass, and tenor trombone.

Tenor violin parts were also written in this clef (see e.g. Giovanni Battista Vitali's Op. 11).

A C-clef on the second line of the staff is called the mezzo-soprano clef, rarely used in modern Western classical music.

It was used in 17th century French orchestral music for the second viola or first tenor part ('taille') by such composers as Lully, and for mezzo-soprano voices in operatic roles, notably by Claudio Monteverdi.

[citation needed] A C-clef on the first line of the staff is called the soprano clef.

Starting in the 18th century, music for some instruments (such as guitar) and for the tenor voice have used treble clef, although they sound an octave lower.

Using a C-clef on the third space places the notes identically, but this notation is much less common[9][10] as it is easily confused with the alto and tenor clefs.

While the F-clef notated to sound an octave lower can be used for contrabass instruments such as the double bass and contrabassoon, and the F-clef notated to sound an octave higher can be used for the bass recorder, these uses are extremely rare.

In Italian scores up to Gioachino Rossini's Overture to William Tell, the cor anglais was written in bass clef an octave lower than sounding.

[11] The unmodified bass clef is so common that performers of instruments whose ranges lie below the staff simply learn to read ledger lines.

Rather, it assigns different unpitched percussion instruments to the lines and spaces of the staff.

However, it is more common to write the rhythms using × noteheads on the instrument's normal staff, with a comment to indicate the appropriate rhythmic action.

For guitars and other fretted instruments, it is possible to notate tablature in place of ordinary notes.

[12] Before the advent of clefs, the reference line of a staff was simply labeled with the name of the note it was intended to bear: F, C, or sometimes G. These were the most common 'clefs', or litterae clavis (key-letters), in Gregorian chant notation.

[13] In later medieval music, the round b was often written in addition to another clef letter to indicate that B♭ rather than B♮ was to be used throughout a piece; this is the origin of the key signature.

In the polyphonic period up to 1600, unusual clefs were occasionally used for parts with extremely high or low tessituras.

The F-clef was, until as late as the 1980s in some cases (such as hymnals), or in British and French publications, written like this: In printed music from the 16th and 17th centuries, the C clef often assumed a ladder-like form, in which the two horizontal rungs surround the staff line indicated as C: ; this form survived in some printed editions (see this example, written in four-part men's harmony and positioned to make it equivalent to an octave G clef) into the 20th century.

Clef combinations played a role in the modal system toward the end of the 16th century, and it has been suggested certain clef combinations in the polyphonic music of 16th-century vocal polyphony are reserved for authentic (odd-numbered) modes, and others for plagal (even-numbered) modes,[16][17] but the precise implications have been the subject of much scholarly debate.

Although much of the list was established by 1999, general provision of these symbols in common computer fonts remains rather limited.