I'm learning the song shown. How are these chords meant to be played? Are the chords shown in the middle stave (treble clef) meant to be played by the left hand? How does one tell this from the notation?
Edit- To clarify, in which hand should I play the chord in red?
The arranger probably wants you to play the chords in the right hand.
Generally, composers/arrangers and typesetters are pretty good at reserving the treble clef for the right hand and the bass clef for the left. With no other markings, this is what you would assume is intended.
Now, if they had intended to have the left hand jump, they would have put some sort of indication that it should be played with the left hand (the only one that comes to mind is from an old Debussy score, where it's indicated as m.g.--main gauche--left hand).
Additionally, the leaps between the melody and the lowest note in the chord are at most one octave, which is a comfortable reach for most pianists. An interesting thing to look for is that the chords often could be scored more clearly and with fewer ledger lines in the bass clef; this suggests that they went out of their way to score it in the treble clef, to clearly show that it should be played in the right hand.
This is just what struck me after looking at this small section for about 3 minutes. I'm interested to see if I've missed any other indicators of "handedness" in the scoring.
m.s.(left) and m.d.(right). These are the abbreviations of the Latin terms. Why do French composers always have to use there own language?!
Note: This answer refers to the chord symbols ("Gm", "C7", "F", etc) found on top of the song staff. Colonel Panic's question was actually not about this, but about the notated chords in the upper piano treble staff. I'm leaving this here since it might help someone else.
The chord notations/symbols are merely provided as support, or for letting you make your own accompaniment.
So, either you play the two piano staves as they are written ignoring the chord notations (other than as a possible support in reading the written music), or, if you wish, you can ignore the written notes and make up your own accompaniment from the chord notations.
(The chords are already in the written piano staves, so -- no don't try to add them to the written music.)
The chord notations can also be useful for other accompaniment musicians, such as a guitarist, in playing along with you or as the sole accompanist, or for, say, a saxophonist providing backgrounds and embellishments to the singer and your playing.
