Why “Old Notation” Bass Clef?
One of the reasons I love working on the Neuling low horn etudes with advanced horn students is they will not only work your low range like nothing else but also after about half a dozen you will never have trouble reading old notation bass clef ever again. In horn writing there are two systems for bass clef. Composers as late as Shostakovich used what we commonly refer to today as old notation bass clef. In this system bass clef notes are written one octave lower than the octave we play it in. The first time I saw this I recall being very confused, I thought maybe it was notated in C? But no, it was just notated an octave lower than I was to play in the same key as the horn part (horn in F, horn in D, etc.). New notation has the part written out in the correct octave; you play it as written. Examples of this are quite uncommon before the 20th century. Recently a reader wrote in and asked why this system? It is a very common question without a clear answer. I believe it mostly had to d
