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Transposing instrument
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A transposing instrument is a musical instrument whose

music is notated at a pitch different from the pitch that actually
sounds (concert pitch). Playing a written C on a transposing
instrument produces a pitch other than C, and that pitch
identifies the interval of transposition when describing the
instrument. For example, a written C on a B♭ clarinet sounds a
concert B♭.

Rather than a property of the instrument, the transposition is a

convention of music notation—however, instruments whose
music is typically notated in this way are called transposing The B♭ clarinet is a transposing
instruments. As transposing instruments is a notation instrument. When the note C
convention, the issue of transposition is mainly an issue for occurs in a score that is
genres of music which use sheet music, such as classical music especially written for a B♭
and jazz (while jazz is an improvisation-based music, clarinet (top), the instrument will
professional players are still expected to be able to read lead actually sound a B♭ (bottom),
sheets and big band sheet music). For some instruments (e.g., hence the name of the instrument.
the piccolo or the double bass), the sounding pitch is still a C, The very same fingering when
but in a different octave; these instruments are said to transpose played on an A clarinet will
"at the octave". sound an A, and in a score for A
clarinet, an A will be written as a
C.
Contents
1 Reasons for transposing
1.1 Making it easier to move between instruments
in same family
1.2 Horn crooks
1.3 Reconciling pitch standards
2 Transposition at the octave
3 Mechanical and physical considerations
4 Conductor's score
5 See also
6 Notes
7 References

Reasons for transposing

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There are several reasons that composers, orchestrators and arrangers transpose music for certain
instruments.

Making it easier to move between instruments in same family

Many instruments are members of a family of instruments that differ mainly in size (see examples
below). The instruments in these families have differing ranges, with the members sounding lower
as they get larger; but an identical pattern of fingerings on two instruments in the same family
produces pitches a fixed interval apart. For example, the fingerings which produce the notes of a C
major scale on a standard flute, a non-transposing instrument, produce a G major scale on an alto
flute. As a result, these instruments' parts are notated so that the written notes are fingered the same
way on each instrument, making it easier for a single instrumentalist to play several instruments in
the same family.

Instruments that transpose this way are often referred to as being in a certain "key", such as the "A
clarinet" or "clarinet in A". The instrument's key tells which pitch will sound when the player plays
a note written as C. A player of a B♭ clarinet who reads a written C will sound a B♭ while the
player of an A clarinet will read the same note and sound an A. The non-transposing member of the
family is thus called a "clarinet in C".

Examples of families of transposing instruments:

saxophones
clarinets
flutes

Examples of families of non-transposing instruments:

trombones[1]
tubas[1]

Recorders are either untransposed or in some cases transposed at the octave. In the early 20th
century, however, instruments with basic scales other than C were sometimes written as transposing
instruments.

Horn crooks

‹See Tfd›

Before valves were invented in the 19th century, horns and trumpets (except for slide-bearing
versions such as the sackbut and its classical and modern descendant, the trombone, and finger-hole
horns like the cornett and serpent) could play only the notes of the overtone series from a single
fundamental pitch. Starting in the early 18th century, a system of crooks was devised in Germany,
enabling this fundamental to be changed by inserting one of a set of crooks between the mouthpiece

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and the lead pipe of the instrument, increasing the total length of its sounding tube. As a result, all
horn music was written as if for a fundamental pitch of C, but the crooks could make a single
instrument a transposing instrument into almost any key.

Changing these lead-pipe crooks was time-consuming, and even keeping them from falling out
while playing was a matter of some concern to the player, so changing crooks could take place only
during substantial rests. Medial crooks, inserted in the central portion of the instrument, were an
improvement devised in the middle of the 18th century, and they could also be made to function as
a slide for tuning, or to change the pitch of the fundamental by a semitone or tone. The introduction
of valves made this process unnecessary, though many players and composers found the tone
quality of valved instruments inferior (Richard Wagner sometimes wrote horn parts for both natural
and valved horns together in the same piece). F transposition became standard in the early 19th
century, with the horn sounding a perfect fifth below written pitch in treble clef. In bass clef
composers differed in whether they expected the instruments to transpose down a fifth or up a
fourth.

Reconciling pitch standards

In music of Germany during the Baroque period, and notably in the music of Johann Sebastian
Bach, instruments used for different purposes were often tuned to different pitch standards, called
Chorton ("choir pitch") and Kammerton ("chamber [music] pitch"). When they played together in
an ensemble, the parts of some instruments would then have to be transposed to compensate. In
many of Bach's cantatas the organ part is notated a full step lower than the other instruments.[2] See
Pitch inflation.

A few early-music ensembles of the present day must do something similar if they comprise some
instruments tuned to A415 and others to A440, approximately a semitone apart. Modern builders of
continuo instruments sometimes include moveable keyboards which can play with either pitch
standard.[3] The harpsichord has a single string for each note, plucked by a plectrum and the
difference in pitch between the Baroque A at 415 Hz and the "modern" A at 440 Hz is one half
step. Moving the keyboard mechanism right or left causes the A key to play the next string, namely
the A♯ at 440 Hz or the A♭ at 392 Hz respectively. Movement of the keyboard allows one to play
higher or lower, though your topmost or bottommost key will not produce sound unless the builder
has provided extra strings to accommodate the transposition feature.

Transposition at the octave

If an instrument has a range too high or too low for composers to easily write its music on bass or
treble clef, the music may be written either an octave higher or an octave lower than it sounds, in
order to reduce the use of ledger lines. Instruments that "transpose at the octave" are not playing in
a different key from concert pitch instruments, but sound an octave higher or lower than written.
Music for the double bass is written an octave higher than it sounds. Thus, when cellos and basses
are reading exactly the same part (a common practice by composers from the early Classical

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period), the basses' bassline is an octave below the cellos'.

Most authorities include this type of notation under the umbrella "transposing instruments",[4]
although it's different from the way the term transposing is used in other musical contexts.

Mechanical and physical considerations

Most woodwind instruments have one major scale whose execution involves lifting the fingers
more or less sequentially from the bottom to top. This scale is usually the one notated as a C scale
(from C to C, with no sharps or flats) for that instrument. The note written as C sounds as the note
of the instrument's transposition — on an E♭ alto saxophone, that note sounds as a concert E♭, on
an A clarinet, that note sounds as a concert A. Clarinets are one exception, in that they actually
have two different scales in the first and second registers, nominally an F scale and a C scale, but
treated by the performer as sounding "at pitch" for a C clarinet. The bassoon is another exception; it
is not a transposing instrument, yet its "home" scale is F (like the low register of the C clarinet).

Brass instruments, when played with no valves engaged (or, for trombones, with the slide all the
way in), play a series of notes that form the overtone series based on some fundamental pitch, e.g.,
the B♭ trumpet, when played with no valves engaged, can play the overtones based on B♭. Usually,
that pitch is the note that indicates the transposition of that brass instrument. Trombones are an
exception — they read at concert pitch, although tenor and bass trombones are pitched in B♭, alto
trombone in E♭. Double horns are another exception, in that they combine two different sets of
tubing into a single instrument, most characteristically in F and B♭. The horn part is nevertheless
transposed uniformly in F (and indeed seldom if ever specifies whether a double or single horn is to
be used), with the player deciding when to switch from one side of the instrument to the other.
Single B♭ horns also normally read from parts transposed in F.

In general, for these instruments there is some reason to consider a certain pitch the "home" note of
an instrument, and that pitch is usually written as C for that instrument. The concert pitch of that
note is what determines how we refer to the transposition of that instrument. [5]

Conductor's score
In conductors' scores and other full scores, music for transposing instruments is generally written in
transposed form, just as in the players' parts. Some composers from the beginning of the 20th
century onward have written orchestral scores entirely in concert pitch, e.g. the score of Sergei
Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 1 in D♭.

Transposing instruments' names almost always use flats instead of sharps (thus there are
instruments in E♭ or in B♭, but these are never today called instruments in D♯ or in A♯). In practice
the actual transposition in the score may (for the convenience of the player) depend on the key of
the music. For example, in a section in C major an E♭ alto saxophone part will appear in A major
(three sharps). But in a section in concert B major it would be impractical to notate the sax part in

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G♯ major part (a key with eight sharps, i.e. six sharps and one double-sharp). Instead their part
would appear in A♭ major (four flats), just as if they were playing a D♯ instrument.

See also
Category:Transposing instruments
List of musical instruments by transposition

Notes
1. Apel, Willi, ed. (1972). "Transposing instruments". Harvard Dictionary of Music (2nd ed.). Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press. p. 860. ISBN 0-674-37501-7.
2. Dreyfus, Laurence (1987). Bach's Continuo Group. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 11.
ISBN 0-674-06030-X.
3. Carey Beebe Harpsichords Australia. "CBH Global Harpsichord Technology".
4. Willi Apel, ed. (1972). "Transposing instruments". Harvard Dictionary of Music (2 ed.).. According to
this article, if an octave-transposing clef is used (with a little 8 above or below, the term "transposition"
does not apply.
5. http://www.dwerden.com/eu-articles-bareuph.cfm

References
Kennan, Kent Wheeler. The Technique of Orchestration, Second Edition. Englewood Cliffs,
New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970, 1952; ISBN 0-13-900316-9
Del Mar, Norman. The Anatomy of the Orchestra. University of California Press, 1981

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