Besides reducing the needs of using ledger lines and making the score easier to read, are there any other reasons?
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2Have you considered what the alternatives could be?– TimJan 9, 2017 at 15:29
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1That's an easy one: no, there aren't any other imprtant reasons. Clefs are necessary because our eyes deal well only with about five lines and that's it.– Kilian FothJan 10, 2017 at 9:50
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4 Answers
There are two main reasons for this which have to do with the actual instrument ranges and what you can fit on manuscript paper. Different instruments play in much different ranges so having only one clef will make things difficult. Using the same clef for double bass and flute would be silly as you would have and instrument whose lowest note is C1 use the same clef as an instrument that can get up to D7.
As you increase ledger lines needed you also reduce what you can fit on an actual score especially when you have more than one instrument on a score. If we got rid of a clef then any instrument that uses that clef would pretty much take up an extra staff on a manuscript so you could not fit as much material per page.
The different clefs makes reading music easier. Sure everything could be written in treble clef, but counting 6+ ledger lines is pain especially when sight reading. The Bass clef and Tenor (also all other C clefs) make the notes fit into a staff and thus easier to read. It also shows the pitch relative to middle C, unless the clef is used for transposition. Example Bb Clarinet
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4"The different clefs makes reading music easier" - This is not necessarily true. Standard British brass band notation does notate every instrument in the treble clef (except for bass trombone) using octave transpositions. The historical reason was to simplify reading if a player moved from one instrument to another - the position of a note of the staff corresponds to the same valve fingering and harmonic for every instrument.– user19146Jan 9, 2017 at 15:40
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Exactly! An alternative 'bass clef' would be the treble clef transposed two octaves down.– johnJun 29, 2022 at 11:56
It is not exactly clear, whether you are asking for a full score or a part.
For a part only one reason is missing from your enumeration, but this is in my opinion the most important one: convention or tradition.
You will have a hard time to find a viola piece notated in something else than alto clef, and even in case of success, you would likely receive a bewildered glance from a potential player.
For some instruments the conventions are regionally dependent, so French Horn seems to have bass and treble clef areas.
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1Instruments with a wide range, usually read two or even three clefs (e.g. cello - bass, tenor, treble) to cover the whole range of the instrument without excessive use of leger lines. French horns are a bit of a special case, since the only notes that need the bass clef are the rarely used pedal notes, and to fit them on the bass clef a different octave transposition is used for the treble and bass clef notation!– user19146Jan 9, 2017 at 15:45
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@alephzero: As bassoonist I'm aware of the range argument, but I consider it lacking. The basset horn also has a range of four octaves (which corresponds to bass and tenor clef with at least two ledger lines each) and I'm told it is generally notated in the treble clef. The brain is a flexible thing, and one may train it a second clef as well as recognizing more than four ledger lines, even If I would prefer the first one.– guidotJan 9, 2017 at 19:59
Bass Clef totally unnecessary, just complicates the music. It's just tradition. If you have a note at the beginning of the piece that a section is one, two or three octaves lower. that is all that is required. It's a pain in the butt for instrumentalist who have only read treble clef.
