Why “Old Notation” Bass Clef?

One of the reasons I love working on the Neuling low horn etudes with advanced horn students is they will not only work your low range like nothing else but also after about half a dozen you will never have trouble reading old notation bass clef ever again.

In horn writing there are two systems for bass clef. Composers as late as Shostakovich used what we commonly refer to today as old notation bass clef. In this system bass clef notes are written one octave lower than the octave we play it in. The first time I saw this I recall being very confused, I thought maybe it was notated in C? But no, it was just notated an octave lower than I was to play in the same key as the horn part (horn in F, horn in D, etc.).

New notation has the part written out in the correct octave; you play it as written. Examples of this are quite uncommon before the 20th century.

Recently a reader wrote in and asked why this system? It is a very common question without a clear answer. I believe it mostly had to do initially with easily notating two horn parts together on one line of a score from the days of before Mozart for the few notes that needed to shift over to bass clef on the natural horn. And then, after a time, it just became the tradition. For example, this excerpt of the score of Beethoven 7 is a good example. With the bass clef notes an octave too low they visually look low still on the staff and, if Beethoven had wanted the first horn notes to be even higher than one octave above the second there is plenty of room to notate it on the same stave.

Beethoven 7, movement 1

It is worth noting as well that this type of notation is not confined to horn parts; Classical trumpet parts also have many examples of old notation bass clef writing.

If in doubt if it is old or new notation bass clef it is usually clear in the context of the lower parts in the section; if the notes are lower than any horn player can play, it is old notation.

One final note, working with people on the low range I always use the Neuling books at some point. But with that said I have taught a number of advanced students who came in from other schools and were completely unfamiliar with these etudes. They are great! I have more on Hermann Neuling here, check these etudes out.