Home > Clef

There are three commonly used types of clef symbols: the G clef, the F clef, and the C clef. All of these clef symbols intentionally resemble the cursive forms of their respective letters. They have letter names because they assign the note with that name to a particular line on the staff.

The use of a particular clef also implies in principle a certain tessitura : the F clef assigns its line not to just any F but to the F below middle C, the C clef assigns its line to middle C and the G clef assigns its lign not to just any G but to the G above middle C (see below for the 5th line F clef vs. the 2nd line G clef, and for the 1st line G clef vs. the 4th line F clef). However the tessitura can be modified by using the "8" or "15" symbols:

Writing an "8" or a "15" immediately above a clef symbol shifts the notes of the staff up an octave; likewise, writing the "8" or "15" beneath the clef symbol shifts the notes down an octave. This notation is used mostly for the G and F clefs. (For example guitar music and male tenor parts are usually written in 2nd line G clef with the "8" immediately below like specified above to indicate that the music is one octave below what is implied by the 2nd line G clef. It may even happen that the "8" is dispensed with, assuming the guitar player or the tenor singer would understand, but it is better practice to put it. The small piccolo flute plays an octave above the normal flute, and normally its music should be written in G clef with an "8" above it.)

The tessitura implied by a clef can also be modified in the course of a score with the 8 (or 8a or 8va), 15a, 8a bassa, and 15a bassa notations.

In some cases the tessitura implication of the clef is ignored, e.g. when the use of a clef is simply a drill meant as a preparation for the skill of sight transposition (see below).

The following image shows most of the clefs found in modern musical notation:

But why all these different clefs? Although only four are common today, as many as eight have been used previously. The reason is, oddly not a musical but a mechanical one. In the days of early music printing presses (i.e, during the Renaissance), ledger lines were difficult to print, so a wide variety of clefs were subsequently used.

1 Notes

• As a kind of shorthand, one can also use in manuscript, in the case of a double-staff piano score a C-clef between the two staffs, at the level of the first ledger line, to signify 2nd line G clef on the upper staff (in which the first ledger line below the staff is the so called middle C) and 4th line F clef on the lower staff (in which the first ledger line above the staff is that same middle C).
• The 5th line C clef, or baritone clef, is often written as the 3rd line F clef; both ways are exactly equivalent.
• The 5th line F clef, or subbass clef, used e.g. in scores by Heinrich Schuetz, implies the same note names as the 2nd line G clef but is used two octaves down from the 2nd line G clef; in other words the names of the notes are the same for both clefs but the their tessitura s are 2 octaves apart. The 5th line F clef is the lowest clef, i.e. the clef implying the lowest tessitura when one follows strictly the tessitura implications of the clefs—see above.
• The 1st line G clef, or French violin clef, used in France for violin music in the 17th and 18th century, implies the same note names as the 4th line F clef but is used two octaves up from the 4th line F clef; again: the names of the notes are the same for both clefs but their tessitura s are 2 octaves apart. The 1st line G clef is the highest clef, i.e. the clef implying the highest tessitura when one follows strictly the tessitura implications of the clefs—see above.
• The 3rd line, 4th line and 5th line G clefs are never used because they are not needed: they are entirely equivalent to, respectively, the 1st line, 2nd line and 3rd line C clefs; similarly the 2nd line and 1st line F clefs are never used since they are entirely equivalent to, respectively, the 4th line and 3rd line C clefs.
• The "percussion clef" is not a clef in the same sense that the F, C and G clefs. It is simply a convention that indicates that the lines and spaces of the staff are each assigned to a percussion instrument with no precise pitch: e.g. bass drum on the 1st line, snare drum on the 3rd line, hi-hat on the 5th line is a common assignment. Note that percussion instruments with identifiable pitches, such as kettledrums ( timpani) are assigned their own staff in orchestral scores. Kettledrums are written in 4th line F clef.

One more use of the clefs is training in sight reading: the ability to read in any clef is useful for being able to transpose on sight (see sight transposition ), although in that case the tessitura implied by the given clef must be ignored. It is then only necessary to use 7 clefs, so that any written note can take any of the 7 different names (A, B, C, D, E, F, G). Students in French and Belgian conservatories and music schools (among other places?) are thoroughly drilled in this kind of exercise and solfeggios meant for use in those institutions are about the only scores where one will find nowadays a 1st line or 2nd line C clef or a 3rd line F clef. Note that for some unclear reason the 3rd line F clef is preferred in the French and Belgian pedagogical tradition to the equivalent 5th line C clef. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that very early medieval scores had only 4 line staffs, hence possibly the avoidance in some particularly traditionalist circles to write a clef on the 5th line.