Re: wrong transposition of horn

[Josiah Boothby]

(if this continues further, should we move this out of bugs?)

I will beg you, as a hornist myself, to protect whatever hornist is
reading your parts from confusion between the old and new usages of bass
clef. If you must use the old (as I've said, it makes a certain logical
sense in some older music), please be so kind as to indicate your usage
with either a text disclaimer (at the top of the part or as a footnote),
or with the inclusion of a little 8 above the clef.

I know very few hornists who prefer the old notation. Those few of us
who do prefer it generally recognize the contexts under which it is most
useful. The habit of using a different transposition is no longer useful
in general, as the horn is no longer restricted by gaps in the harmonic
series and is fully capable of four octaves. The lowest octave in old
notation is absurdly confusing, and the use of the upper half of the
bass-clef staff creates ambiguity.

Josiah

> Sigh.  It seems that I'm not able to write what I really want.
> Another try.  I know that I can tune the clefs, but this isn't my
> problem.  Please concentrate on the process of transposing!  All music
> I enter in LilyPond is written as it sounds, including Horn (so I
> basically write Horn in C).  This is fine for the full score, and
> indeed almost all full scores from today are scores in C.  For
> creating the horn parts, I use
> 
>   \transpose f c'
> 
> to get a horn part in F, and here is the problem: Horn parts converted
> to bass clef are written a fifth higher, but according to the
> classical rules it should be a fourth lower.  My suggested property
> controls \transpose, not the clefs: Notes found in bass clef should be
> transposed an octave down additionally.
> 
> 
>     Werner