Clefs, Pitch, and Transposition in Vocal Music before 1600

Abstract

Vocal music of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was notated in various combinations of clefs, including standard, high, and low arrays. While the instrumental practice of transposing music written in high clefs down a fourth or fifth in order to accommodate the natural ranges of human voices is amply and unambiguously documented from around 1600 onwards, it is more difficult to prove that a similar practice of adjusting the sounding compass to a normative pitch was applied to earlier vocal polyphony. Theorists from the late fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, however, agree in recognizing the existence of just four basic male voice types (soprano, alto, tenor, and bass) and in limiting the ordinary compass of vocal music to 19-20 notes-the size of the gamut-a prescription that can only be understood as referring to a range of pitches, no matter on what notes that range might be written. A series of case studies of repertoire composed between 1450 and 1550 confirms that the principle of a limited compass was unfailingly respected in actual music. The only logical conclusion is that, no matter on what notes a piece is written, its sounding pitch was adjusted to a normative level.