To the non-musician, the treble clef sign is just an icon representing music; the bass clef sign is a mystery, and the other clef signs are nothing but hieroglyphics. To the musician, however, the clef signs are fixed stars. They show the unchanging location on the lines or spaces of a particular music note, and just as you can find your way by knowing East, all the other notes may be found from the one.
The treble clef sign shows the G above middle C and the bass clef sign shows, between its dots, the fixed location of the F below middle C. The less familiar clef signs fix the location of middle C and are used by cellists, violists, trombone players and others who spend lots of time in that desert between the top line of the bass clef and the bottom line of the treble. Tenors in choirs use a treble clef which sometimes has a little figure eight at the bottom, since their notes are sung or played an octave lower than written.
“Treble” means high and “Bass” means low. Most pianists are used to having the right hand on the higher notes and the left on the bottom. We never take the clef signs for granted, however, since both hands could play in either treble or bass.
In the wonderful world of piano duets, it is common practice for primo or prima (the high part) to play using two treble clefs, with secondo or seconda playing two bass clefs, both hands on the bottom part of the piano.
In the old days, before phonographs and radio, piano duets were often the only way people could hear the latest orchestral or chamber music works when they lived far away from cities which had orchestras (almost everybody had a piano and many people could play a little.) Four hands would split the parts of the instruments between them. Even Brahms, during whose lifetime recording was invented, provided four-hands versions of some of his works.
In the 19th Century days, a courting couple might be left unchaperoned if the lady’s female companion could hear the piano from her post outside the salon door. A few three-hand piano pieces date from this time.
Scrambling the clef signs produces a different kind of recreation for the player with no discernible difference in the sound. Chopin, Schumann and others would sometimes write a bass clef note higher than the treble note played at the same time. The effect is that the player’s thumbs cross, a kind of “Hello” from the composer, since the listener can’t tell from the sound that this is happening.
Mozart at least once wrote duets so that one player was still holding a key down when the other player landed on it. Mozart’s duets were probably played with his sister Nannerl, so he managed in this way to give her finger a good poke.
Other composers including Schubert and Brahms arrange the clefs so that the duet player’s arms cross. Great examples of this are the last part of Schubert’s piano duet piece called “Our Friendship Never Changes” (“Notre amitie est invariable”) and the fourth Brahms Hungarian Dance which John and I are playing in the video.
Duet references: Cameron McGraw, Piano Duet Repertoire, Indiana University Press. Ernest Lubin, The Piano Duet, Grossman.
