In Gregorian chant the "C" clef and "F" clef don't necessarily mean C and F as we know them on the modern keyboard. Rather, they help identify the relationship of whole and half steps and are derived from the modes. They really refer to "Do" and "Fa".

With the development of the tonal system and the standard 5-line staff, pitches became "fixed", so that while "Do" is moveable, "C" is not in clef notation.

As for "C" being "C", the other question is whether you mean relative to its position on the staff or its relationship to "A=440hz". Now you're getting into the realm of tuning systems and the establishment of a standard controlling pitch for tuning so that multiple instruments can be played together, all of which have a physical (structural) tolerance that allows them to be tuned to that pitch within a particular tuning system. A group of like instruments must be capable of being tuned to the same reference pitch so that they can play as an ensemble and still sound alike. That's why you can't, for example, use a combination of modern and museum instruments all tuned to "A=440". The museum instruments would pull themselves to pieces or be unable to produce the proper pitches with their proper quality of sound. With respect to octaves, C1 and C3 are both C relative to each other, just in different octaves, and that is rooted in acoustical physics and the system of the overtone series.

As I said before, in the case of Gregorian chant, the "C" and "F" clefs do not relate to a pitch location on a keyboard, nor an octave, since chant was not intended to be sung by mixed voices, but rather by like voices where octave placement is not an issue, but comfortable pitch range is. That's the beauty of chant. You can pick your reference pitches so that the extremes (which are usually quite confined) are within a comfortable singing range for the schola. It's not until the employment of multiple staves that octaves become an issue.

Notes an octave apart have a 2:1 ratio of frequencies, which makes them sound especially pleasing when sounded together, and which can create sympathetic vibrations in a string of half the length of a vibrating string. This all adds to the perception of sameness.

In our system of diatonic scales, the octave is the place where the pattern of whole and half steps begins to repeat, making C1 and C3 the same "scale degree" in any given scale. You can also say that C1 and C3 are the same "pitch class" (the set of all C's).

I asked Dr Mahrt at the Colloquium whether there was any possibility that the use of letter names for the Gregorian scale implied any standard of absolute pitch, and he denied it.

Each of the modes, he pointed out, has its own characteristic range. If there had been a fixed pitch for C, then the necessary vocal range to perform all the chants would have been impracticably broad. Most choirs would find themselves unable to perform a substantial part of the repertoire of necessary chants for the Office and Mass.

It was only with the advent of fixed pitch musical instruments that the letter names (or Italianate solfege names) for notes began to assume (more or less) fixed pitches. And, long after fixed pitch instruments were common, it was equally likely that an a cappella work would be sung at a pitch different from what the notation would have suggested to an instrumentalist. Singers of yore were well-enough trained that they rarely, if ever, relied on an instrument such as an organ to play along on their parts until the parts were learned.

In modern terms, we might think of this as singing such a piece at a transposed pitch, but without actually writing out the transposition – just as one might sing Gregorian or other plainchant at a variety of pitches.

For what it's worth, many instrumentalists were (and still are) quite adept at "sight transposition" of music; for example, it is not at all uncommon amongst organists to be able to transpose at sight. And for the sight tranposition-challenged, some modern instruments have "transposing enhancements" (such as transposing knobs or keyboard slides on organs or harpsichords, or capos on guitars, mandolins and banjos, or mechanisms that shift the slides on keyed brass instruments) which allow for transposition to a limited number of nearby pitches.

But, back to chant singing and notation. The "doh" clef is a stylized "C" and the "fah" clef is a stylized "F" (just as the treble clef is a stylized "G" and the bass clef is a stylized "F"). Depending upon what country you were in, "doh" was either "doh" (or "ut") or "C", and "fah" was either "fah" or "F" – and these were all moveable. Depending upon where one was in the world, one used letter name and/or solfege names for the notes of a scale. And Professor Mahrt is completely right: For Gregorian chant (or other plainchant), there is no implied pitch in the letter names for the scale. I would only add that this is also true for early a cappella polyphony as well (and, by extension to any a cappella music, at least in performance practice).

I am surprised he didn't use the Middle English "amonges." LOL. Transposing more than a whole step is beyond my abilities. Sometimes transposing a composer's work from one voice range into another seems to destroy the composer's intent. I once worked for a local newspaper with a columnist who decided he had been wrongly born and living as a male for 35+ years or so. He became another gender, and the result looked something like Herman Munster in a dress. Some of those radical transpositions can be quite alarming.

My friend, the horn player, routinely transposes and thinks nothing of it. When I studied organ years ago, it wasn't emphasized.

Noel: I retired from teaching at the end of May.

I would hope he's not working with castrati!

Well, I'd hope not either. My point was that musicological authenticity is a secondary value in liturgical music.

I have often wondered about how Southern European choirs handle the chants if they, as reported, use a fixed pitch. I have a wide range, and without warming up can pretty much do what's listed for Bass on SATB requirements. (C2 to E4.) Yet many of the chants for this Sunday were undoable if I stayed with C = Doh.

In scores where "doh" is one the second line, they work out my voice in my "sweet range," so I have all those printed out. (About 35 from all of the L. Usualis, I think.) But I could just as easily do it with any.

However, I read a review of one of those many books on how we learn, and apparently, while pitch is natural, how we perceive is, as so much else, determined before puberty. I did not grow up in a musical household and learned music through the keyboard. Thus, my sense of pitch will ALWAYS be tied to the keyboard. One thing I am grateful for is that the system my teacher's used (Robert Pace method) emphasized transposition from the start, so I find people who talk about the "sound" of one key or the other hard to understand. I think the original questioner will experience the answer he is looking for just by doing doh-re-me up the keyboard.

(I am glad to see some of you used Homer Simpson's spelling of "doh." I am an English teacher, and a firm fan of how English spelling takes on foreign words and adjusts the spelling where necessary. "Do" as a note comes from Latin, and is pronounced "doh.")

Kenneth

One simple reason, Jeffrey: chant and polyphony are awesome. The Gather hymnal is not. :D

In the one "awesome music" OF parish I'm familiar with, I don't see men lining up to sing.

There are already threads on boys/men not singing, if one does a search.