This is just something that arose from a conversation today.

In old scores, the bass clef is represented by a more swirly figure that is printed the other way round from what we are acustomed to today. Also, crotchet rests look like quaver rests, except that they are printed the "other way round". I prefer the more recent method of printing, and yet the old system held sway for many years. Can anyone throw any light on such methods of printing?

I find reading in other cleffs than trebble and bass very difficult. I don't know why they want pianists to know other cleffs. I have to check theory home works from students (Associated board) and it takes too long for me. I get annoyed because it takes time from my lesson.
Here I have to be a jack of all trades. My teachers would not dread of teaching theory or musicianship.
Sometimes I don't know why they change to different cleff when it could be expressed in these two.

I know that it is good for me to learn more, but ..

There in the Eastern part of Europe we were calling ABC etc la si (ti) do. So that was no problem to sing it solfegio. (the called it).
The movable solfa I find difficult because I have to transpose it. It would be easier if they notated everything in C major. To me the movable solfa is more difficult and I don't understand how it makes it easier for anyone to sing in say F major, but call the notes in C (sight reading).
I can imagine it is good for amature choruses.

That does sound very clever, Martin.

However, what I really meant when I said "by hand" is a page of printed music that a human being has had to set out.

Oh yes, I know what you meant. Such a page is indeed a feast for the eye if done well. When you think about it, music pages for printing used to be engraved by hand on to, I believe, a copper plate. When you think about all the alignment and justification involved, it makes my brain go wobbly. And that, just on a straightforward score like a simple piece for strings; imagine the skill required to engrave a page of The Rite of Spring or scores which have cross rhythms and tuplets.

I have always written a bass clef with the tail pointing to the right,i.e.not like a '9'.

I think this is becaue the first scores I was familiar with were Novellos,who used to print their bass clefs that way.

One use of the bass clef which can cause confusion,is the so-called 'old-style' notation for low horn notes. In the bass clef they are written an octave lower,that is,for a horn in F,a fourth below the sounding note, instead of a fifth above it.

In the twentieth century composers and publishers began writing such notes an octave higher,so there are some scores in the 'transitional period where one can't be sure which octave is intended.


There used to be a (less common) similar convention for high cello passages,which would be written in the treble clef but an octave above the sound .Again,in the 20th century this gave way to  writing treble clef notes at concert pitch.And as with the horn,there are scores where it 's not clear which octave is wanted. In the first movement of Elgar's First Symphony he takes the cellos up to A an octave above the treble stave,the hightest note Bach wrote for the violin! It can be done: Britten wrote it for the solo cello in his 'Cello Symphony', but I wonder if Elgar meant the octave below.

Some of the most beautiful printed music I've seen was in the type face used by Durand for their Debussy scres, and by EditionsRusses for Stavinsky, e.g.The Symphony of Psalms.

Lucky Messiaen,still having his music engraved in this type face in the 1970s (La Transfiguration) when British publishers were printing  rather scabby copyist's handwriting,e.g.Tippett 4th Symphony .

As for composers' musical handwriting, Stravinsky's was among the most readable,Berg's is also very clear ,but Sibelius and Vaughan Williams must have had the worst. Poor VW's handwriting was ruined at school when he, naturally left-handed,was forced to write with his right hand.

I'll go along with what my old professor Sandy Goehr said on this one: he said that such things (he was actually talking about knowing how to write old-fashioned forms such as fugues, but I think the point applies even better in the present case) were to be considered as 'tools' - which is not to say that everyone needs them, but as he said, 'I have never come across an instance in which someone would have been better off without tools than with them.'