I agree with you. Even in a transposed score, its essential to know which specific instrument is intended. It’s much less an issue now with notation software than it used to be with written scores and parts, but if a clarinet player asks about a note they have in their part, it’s important to know if the score refers to clarinet in Bb, A, or Eb- whether the score is in in C or transposed. A conductor has to know the correct transposition to answer the question.
Hi,
I don’t know if anyone has already answered, but the first note is an E because the horn in F reads in the ancient key of Mezzosoprano where the C is on the second staff, of course.
I’m not sure I understand, but I’ve never seen horn parts in C clefs. Do you refer to the old chiavette system, where clefs were used to indicate a transposition?
I was taught in orchestration lessons that transposing instruments in concert pitch scores should be labelled ‘F Horn’ or ‘B flat Trumpet’ (i.e. not listing the instrument in F or in B flat) and then also making it very clear at the top of the score that it is a Score in C.
That way you get the information as to the type of instrument that the player is using whilst making it clear that the score is in concert pitch. I quite agree that transposing scores are the norm, however.
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Or in parentheses - Horn (F), Trumpet (Bb), etc…
I would like to see a feature in Dorico where you could set a different label convention for when the score is set to “Concert Score” instead of “Transposing Score” - i.e. the “in F” would automatically become “(F)” when changing to concert score, and change back to “in F” if you change the setting back to transposing. I use C scores quite a bit and this would be handy.
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Would it be possible that this whole “Horn in F” is simply a bad translation? I mean, in French, there’s no F Horn. It’s a “Cor d’harmonie” or “Cor en fa”. And cor en fa, trompette en si b, etc. has never meant anything else than the instrument was a transposing one (and what note sounds when it plays a C). Not related to the actual key played by the instrument or the orchestra. My 2 c. 
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It isn’t completely standardized even in English. It depends on the person looking at the score, some people will take “in F” to mean “without a shadow of a doubt, this is a transposed score, not a concert score”. Others will interpret it as being just the key the instrument is in and not indicating whether the score itself is transposing or not.
Gould says to leave the transpositions out if it is a concert core to avoid confusion, and just indicate things like “Horn” and “Clarinet”, unless it is a situation where you can have like Bb and Eb clarinets in the same piece. She doesn’t say how to indicate it in this case other than “in Bb” or “in Eb”, but publishers seem to use “(Bb)” and “(Eb)” for this purpose.
At least in the film world, we produce concert pitch scores and often include the instrument transpositions in the staff labels (it’s not a hard and fast rule; generally it comes down to what the orchestrator’s done, as we copyists don’t often have time to fix these sorts of things in scores.)
@mducharme, where does Gould say to leave the transpositions out if it’s a concert score? This is all I can find on the matter:
It is right there -For clarity, trumpets written at concert pitch are best labelled merely as “Trumpets”
In the instrumentation list before the score it would indicate the Bb if a Bb trumpet is wanted - in that list it would indicate “3 Trumpets in Bb” or whatever without issue.
This is not only convention for trumpets, but also other instruments. The way Gould phrases it is a bit unclear, granted, but that is what she means.
I don’t think that’s what she means at all. My understanding is that instruments that are in C shouldn’t show their transposition. This doesn’t apply to Horns in F or Clarinets in Bb: these are covered by the preceding sentence.
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Your 2c are spot on😉
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I always indicate whether my scores are in C or transposed, and I always- regardless if the score is in C or transposed- indicate the specific instruments used. I’ll label Bb Trumpet, C Trumpet, Clarinet in A, etc. I think it best to be as clear as possible to avoid any of the potential issues in performance we’re discussing here😉
My professors (composers of many many years experience) have always said that it was wrong to show “Horn in F” or whatever as a staff label if it was a concert score. At first I had the same interpretation of what Gould was saying as you did, but after my professors corrected me, I started to parse the same text differently.
The Gould paragraph starts talking about “in C” but then it gives a completely different example at the very end. The entire paragraph is not about “in C” instruments, as she gives an example at the very end about a “in Bb” trumpet.
It says “For clarity, trumpets written at concert pitch are best labelled merely as Trumpets” - taken as written, this is independent of whether it is a C trumpet or Bb trumpet or antiquated F trumpet or whatever else - i.e. she is saying that, if written at concert pitch, Bb trumpets are best labelled as “Trumpets”. As a follow up to that, it says “if a Bb trumpet is intended, this should be stated in the instrumentation list” - she does not say that the staff should be labelled as that. Instead this combination of lines suggests that Bb trumpets should just say “Trumpets” in the staff label but “Trumpets in Bb” in the instrumentation list. I think this is pretty clear.
Taken together, she is suggesting the following practice if you are using Bb Trumpets in a concert score:
- Staff label “3 Trumpets”, not “3 Trumpets in Bb” - they are written at concert pitch
- Instrumentation list would say “3 Trumpets in Bb” regardless of whether the score was at concert pitch or not, so that you would know what type of trumpet was wanted.
That is what she indicates at the end - she specifically says that the “in Bb” should be stated in the instrumentation list (and therefore not in the staff labels).
This practice would seem really strange if it only applied to transposing trumpets - i.e. using “Trumpets” in the score and “Trumpets in Bb” in the instrumentation list. She doesn’t really clarify whether this example is only for trumpets, but presumably it would affect things like horns and clarinets in the same way. It would seem a bit odd to have a rule like this that only applied to Trumpets, so I would assume that what she is suggesting there goes for Horns and Clarinets as well, and it is directly in line with what my professors indicated was correct vs incorrect practice.
What she says about Bb trumpets at the end seems to be completely clear, and yet on the surface it seems to directly contradict the opening sentence of that excerpt: “Usually a specific transposing instrument is described by key even when it is written in C in the score”. The best way I have of explaining this contradiction is the opening sentence says “is described by” and doesn’t specifically mention staff labels. Taken completely literally, this seems to suggest that she means “described by” in the sense of someone saying “Sally over there is playing a Clarinet in Bb” and it is correct to describe the instrument as a Clarinet in Bb even when the score itself is in C. This is a different thing from indicating that the staff label should be “Clarinet in Bb” or something of the sort.
I realize that explanation seems to be splitting hairs between “is described by” and " has the staff label", but there is no other good way I can explain the bit about Bb trumpets at the end of the second paragraph as otherwise it seems to be in direct contradiction with the first paragraph.
As an example of this, I recently completed my doctoral dissertation and defended it successfully. One of the things that was a required revision to get it finally accepted was to change the staff label from “Clarinet in Bb” to “Clarinet”, but to leave the indication “Clarinet in Bb” in the instrument list at the beginning. That was just a month ago for me. I had thought before that that it was just the one professor who didn’t want the “in Bb” in staff labels in concert scores, so I was kind of ignoring that because I thought maybe it was something specific to him, but I found out through that revision process that they all thought the same about that.
The exact quote from my thesis supervisor regarding the revision in my score:
Having the label of “Cl. in Bb” traditionally means that the music on that staff is transposed to Bb. In contemporary scores, you sometimes see “Clarinet in Bb” labels in C scores, but it would be better if it didn’t say “in Bb” and were just “Cl." or "Cl. (Bb)”.
In my particular case, I just went with “Clarinet” because there were no other clarinets that could be confused with the Bb clarinet. If I was using both Bb and Eb clarinets, I would have taken the option to leave the Bb in parentheses instead.
I’m afraid I disagree with your professors, and I disagree with your interpretation of Gould.
The first sentence tells you what to do with instruments that are in a key other than C. The paragraph that follows tells you what to do with instruments that are sometimes but not always in C. It clarifies with Trumpets as in some places it’s standard for Trumpets to be in C.
It doesn’t really matter whether we agree or not, but if your view was universally held then at least one proofreader at a reputable publishing house would have pulled me up on my staff labels by now.
(edit: I’ve just looked through the Concert scores for the LSO Discovery Panufnik Scheme pieces that are currently on my desk - all three composers have shown the transpositions in the staff labels.)
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At this point, now that each perspective has been aired at least once, does anyone think a reader who has read this thread from the start is likely to change his or her mind on this issue?
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It’s not hard for me to find examples of scores in C with things like “in F” or “in Bb” as a staff label either, which is why I kind of ignored that advice for the longest time. I don’t personally see “in F” as being that different from “(F)” but I guess for some people it is. Either way, I don’t necessarily see the harm in going with the way that is least likely to cause confusion.
What I do think is definitely wrong would be if you had a score that had something like two Bb clarinets and an Eb clarinet and just indicating “Clarinet” for all three staves as the label. Whatever scheme is used, it still needs to be clear which instrument is which. Simplifying down to “Clarinet” alone only works if there is only one type of clarinet in use in that score.
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I did learn from the discussion. The aspect of discussion between players and conductor using a transposed score makes a lot of sense to me. Alright so what about this by extension:
When key signatures are used, they are an obvious and comforting confirmation (at least to me) of what is transposed. And they would help me stay grounded as to the role of that Bb or whatever in the harmonic scheme of things.
With chromaticism and the preference for explicit accidentals without a key sig in certain film scores- does that change anything? I feel like as a conductor I’d prefer to keep the key signatures in a transposed score (see the transcriptions and modulations) and let the parts be explicit. But what is best or right or standard?
Like @gdball I too have learned. Not least this discussion prompted me to revisit the Berlioz (ed. Strauss) Treatise on Orchestration (available at IMSLP), which so clearly shows the evolution/transition from natural horns (with all their idiosyncrasies and transpositions) to the valve horn and the practices and preferences of the day.
Strauss is quite candid that his preference for showing every Horn transposition might simply be force of habit (unnecessary in the world of the valve horn)… Thus we may have to accept that as practice evolves so does terminology. Modern practices differ from historic…
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