C clefs

The AGO professional examinations are often criticized because they test musical skills that seem old-fashioned and of little relevance to a modern working musician.

My voluntaries a couple of weeks ago included one of the most arcane of these skills: C clefs. I played Contrapunctus I from Bach’s Art of Fugue, and one of the Eighteen Chorales, Komm, heiliger Geist (BWV 652), in an edition that put the left hand part in alto clef.

Why did I do this? Both pieces are available in more modern editions that use only treble and bass clef. Partly, I used these versions to stay in practice with the clefs, a circular argument. But partly, it was because these versions were easier to play, and closer to the way that Bach wrote them.

The Contrapunctus was the clearest example. I started with the Kalmus miniature score of the Art of Fugue, using a copy machine to enlarge the pages so that my old eyes could read them more easily. The piece is laid out in four parts, open score (another arcane AGO examination skill): soprano clef, alto clef, tenor clef, bass clef. The parts cross so frequently that the editions which put the four parts in “closed” score (two staffs, treble and bass clef, like most keyboard music) are harder to read than the open score. The open score has the further advantage of clearly delineating the four contrapuntal voices, so that the organist will think linearly (in the four voices) and not vertically (from one vertical sonority to the next).

Even with open score, the piece could be recast into modern clefs: the two upper voices in treble clef, the tenor in transposing treble clef, the lowest voice remaining in bass clef. But the C clefs fit the tessiatura more closely, so that there are few leger lines. This was the principal advantage for the other piece that I played, the Komm, heiliger Geist: the two accompaniment voices in the left hand fall nicely into alto clef, but would require an awkward amount of leger lines in either bass or treble clef.


There is a deeper motive for learning the C clefs, a reason that is rarely mentioned: all of these seemingly arcane skills required for the examinations work together. No single skill in itself is of any great importance; all of them together make one a better musician.

For example, the C clefs are a gateway into transposition, and thereby into the reading of orchestral scores. Most obviously, the alto and tenor clefs are needed in order to read viola parts and some passages in violoncello and trombone parts. Tenor clef can be considered the equivalent of the B flat transposition (the instrumentalist sees written C, the third space in the treble clef, the sound produced is concert B flat. Or she sees what would be a written D in treble clef, the fourth line, and the sound produced is concert C. And with tenor clef, the fourth line is in fact C) – the B flat transposition is essential for most of the wind instruments. Alto clef is the equivalent of the D transposition. Soprano clef (C clef on the bottom line of the staff), never explicitly used in modern music and seemingly the least useful, is the E flat transposition, bread-and-butter for saxophones and thus for jazz charts.

Transposition (likewise tested in the AGO exams at all levels) is in turn an essential element of improvisation, as I described recently. Improvisation is, I think, the most liberating of musical skills, allowing the player to make her own music, customized to the occasion at hand. Besides this, it frees the organist from the printed page when accompanying congregational hymns, it improves one’s understanding of the “written” music composed by others, and it is a doorway into writing one’s own compositions.


A question remains: how does one learn to read the clefs? When I learned the clefs for the AGO exams, I did a lot of sight-reading at slow tempi. I now think that it would have been better to take one piece at a time and learn it thoroughly. This is how we all learned to read treble and bass clef: we played pieces that were written in these clefs, practicing them until they were ready for performance.

Thus, when I play the Komm, heiliger Geist, I solidify my facility with alto clef. For this reason, I play this and many other of the Bach chorales from the Dover edition entitled “Bach Organ Music,” which contains the Schübler Chorales, the Orgelbüchlein, the Third Part of the Clavierübung, the Eighteen Leipzig Chorales (and the Trio Sonatas, which use only treble and bass clef). There is a good bit of alto clef in these chorales, and occasional tenor clef -- an important example of the latter is the “Wachet auf” from the Schübler Chorales. The Kalmus editions of the Brahms and Buxtehude organ works are also useful for the clefs.

I recommend the book “Preparatory Exercises in Score Reading” by R. O. Morris and Howard Ferguson (Oxford University Press), for work in the clefs as well as the stated purpose of the book.

Learning to be a Musician involves a lifetime of effort. There may appear to be shortcuts, but there is no substitute for careful study, including the development of skills for which one cannot at first see any use.