ABSTRACT
Recent scholarship on clefs has not been helped by the universal editorial habit of transcribing into bass or treble clefs voice-parts originally notated in other clefs. The substantive difference between normal and 'high'-clef notation postulated by Hermelink's 'Tonart-typen' thus needs re-examining. The desirability of consistently co-ordinating the voices with the tenor—whatever its clef—seems to have dawned slowly on composers of the high Renaissance, and this explains why early 16th-century polyphony exhibits such bewilderingly varied clef-combinations. Though 'high'-clef notation was in use by 1500, it was not until much later that theorist associated it with specific transpositions. By reviewing modern interpretations of the two standard clef combinations, by exploring their origins, and by amplifying the available evidence that shows how each relates to the other. The chapter explains why low tessitura is indeed something to be expected of music notated in the apparently 'high' clefs.
