In LA scoring sessions (my background), whatever is easiest to read, produces the best result. I don’t use these clefs very often, but when I do, it’s because I feel they produce the cleanest, easiest to read result, for the particular part.
As a session piano player myself, I’ve played on a number of charts in recent years where I’ve seen these clefs, and I have to say, I kinda like 'em. Non-conventional or not – if they make a particular part easier to sightread, they’re alright in my book.
I would hope that one day, there would be a clef editor, in which we can set the octave level ourselves. Or at least a setting for the octave transposition of [ottava] clefs in the properties panel.
But those folks don’t use octave clefs, do they? The interpretation of octave clefs shouldn’t make any difference at all unless you actually use them, right? (If there are lots of folks that badly want to use octave clefs for those instruments, then I’m just wrong.)
It’s a case of house style. Some publishers demand octave clefs for those instruments, and others demand regular clefs for those instruments.
Here we are:
Gould specifies that octave clefs may be used for piccolos etc., and prescribes that octave clefs should not be used for instruments that don’t always transpose an octave.
I suspect you can blame computer programmers for most of this.
Up to 2014, Finale had “octave clefs” with the 8’s which affected the transposition of computer playback. Therefore, Finale users who wanted correct playback used them, since that was the easiest option. The alternative was to mess about creating your own custom clefs, and then save them in a custom library.
And so the world was filled with sheet music from Finale decorated with octave clefs for no good reason.
And people who knew nothing much about notation then assumed this must be the right way to do it, and wanted other notation software to do the same thing.
The same thing happened in word processing, when Microsoft Word included a so-called British English spelling checker which insisted on changing “-ize” to “-ise” everywhere, even though “-ize” had been used in British spelling for centuries.
That’s pretty conclusive. I was wrong.
There still needs to be a solution for vocal staves, where the 8 is necessary and explicit, and where clef changes between G8 and other clefs are likely. (Not least of all for SATB condensing to work correctly.)
Personally I would put “dealing with vocal tenor clefs” in the same general category as “dealing with different notation standards for bass clarinet” etc - i.e. it’s a peculiarity of one particular instrument, not a general issue with octave clefs.
In fact it’s basically the same issue as the old notation for French horn parts, with a different octave transposition for treble and bass clefs (and Dorico doesn’t handle that automatically either!)
(But of course it needs to be addressed for condensing, etc).
Is there finally a solution which is a bit more handy than a work around? I use the clef with the 8 sometimes for piano parts and voice
This is a very old thread, and the functionality has been vastly improved since then. There is an option in Notation Options > Clefs for whether ottava clefs should work (“Respect octave indicator”). Also, you can assign an octave shift to a given clef in the Properties panel, if needed.
(While some composers, like Britten, did use clefs on piano parts, I believe Octave lines are preferred by most pianists.)