Clefs in early music

[benwiggy]

The epic saga is recorded here:

Choir: Odd Tenor playback behavior

Gather round, and I will sing you the Ballad of the Tenors. The early versions of Dorico treated the Tenor as a transposing instrument, like a Contrabass, or a Piccolo – where the octave transposition is implied, but not explicitly stated. (There are, after all, plenty of scores where the Tenor part just has a standard G clef with no 8.) Octave clefs were “cosmetic”, in that they didn’t affect the pitch: that was done in the instrument definition itself. (I believe Sibelius works the same way.…