Did the post on high clefs (June 11) just confuse you more? Early Music Sources put together this great ~10 minute video to explain what high clefs were and how they relate to performance practices!
Chiavette
Hotly debated by theorists for centuries, Early Music Monday tackles the challenges of pitch level and clefs. What were “high clefs” and what did that really mean for performers?
Chiavette (plural of Italian: chiavetta, [kjaˈvetta] "little clefs") is a system of standard combinations of clefs used in polyphonic music of the 16th through 18th centuries, differing from the usual chiavi naturali (the combination of soprano, alto, tenor, and bass clefs.) Typically, these clefs place each staff line a third lower than usual. (A second possible set of clefs, in contrabasso, places each staff line a third higher; this is less common outside of Franco-Flemish compositions.)
The first author to mention a standard set of high clefs is Silvestro Ganassi dal Fontego, in his 1543 Regula Rubertina, chapter 22, which instructs the musician to transpose such music down a fifth.[1][2] Other theorists, such as Adriano Banchieri (1601) and Picerli (1631), indicate to transpose down a fifth if there is no key signature, and a fourth if there is a flat indicated. By mid-century, Italian commentators only mention a transposition down a fourth, and still later the practice seems to have been to transpose downward by a third to account for the high pitch of Italian organs.[2] The Austrian theorist Johann Baptist Samber (1707), meanwhile, gave as his rule to transpose downward by a fourth if the bass is notated in F3, but a fifth if it is notated in C4.[2]
Chiavette (plural of Italian: chiavetta, "little clefs") is a system of standard combinations of clefs used in polyphonic music of the 16th through 18th centuries, differing from the usual chiavi naturali (the combination of soprano, alto, tenor, and bass clefs.) Typically, these clefs place each staff line a third lower than usual.