Number 18 on the list of fundamentals in the Douglas Hill book, which I have used to guide this series, to my mind involves multiple topics deserving of separate articles. For the present series we will start with bass clef and the horn player.
Bass clef?
First, I’ll share a personal story. When in high school I first had to play pieces with bass clef in the horn parts, and I was so confused. I could not read bass clef. Well, I could laboriously figure it out, but then I thought it was in C like a trombone part and had to be transposed further, which was not right. Finally I learned — probably as a freshman in college! — how to read it, and that the pitches were in F or D or whatever the horn part was in.
Old notation? New?
One fun fact in the wacky world of horn playing is that we have not one but two ways that bass clef is notated in horn parts.
Traditionally the notes are written an octave lower than we play. By the early 20th century things began to shift, and composers wrote with the horn parts in the correct octave. Although some composers still used old notation, including, famously, Shostakovich.
Then in high horn parts you often gets notes in bass clef that don’t really need to be. If in doubt, check the 2nd and 4th parts; if they have notes that are too low to play it is almost certainly old notation in your part too.
Why?
The perineal question is why have two different notation systems for bass clef in horn parts? There is an answer to this question, and it has to do with score notation of horn parts in the Classical period. The “problem” it solves (for the composer) is that of putting two horns on the same line of a score when low notes are involved in only one horn part. This article tries to make more sense of the topic:
Music to study
I always suggest the Neuling etudes as the best place to learn old notation well as an advanced student of the horn. Work out six or eight Neuling etudes and you will never ever have trouble reading old notation again.
When the series returns the topics include sight-reading, key signatures, and more.
