Brace
A bracket that joins several staves together.
What it means
The brace is the bracket at the left edge of a page of music that joins several staves standing one above another into a unit. It indicates that the connected staves are to be read simultaneously — either because they belong to one instrument or because they form a group of parts. The word at the same time denotes the braced line itself: one speaks of a page containing four systems.
In the notation
Two forms are distinguished. The curved brace joins the staves of a single instrument, for instance the right and left hand at the piano or the three staves of the organ with the pedal. The straight bracket, usually a vertical stroke with square ends, groups instrument families together in the score — woodwinds, brass, strings. In addition, bar lines drawn through several staves show which lines belong together. At the beginning of every system the clefs and the key signatures stand anew, the time signature by contrast only at the start of the piece or at a change.
Musical use
For reading, the brace is an orientation aid of considerable value. In a large score the bracketing tells the eye at once where an instrument family begins and ends, without the names in the margin having to be read. In piano texture the curved brace makes clear that two staves form a single movement and that voices may cross between them — a note of the left hand may well be notated in the upper staff. In choral scores the bracketing is often used to separate voices and accompaniment visually from one another.
Performance practice
When sight-reading, make it a habit to let the eye run briefly over the whole system at the beginning of a line before you enter: clefs and key signature may have changed against the previous line. With music on several staves it helps to practise the leap from one system to the next deliberately, for it is there that the overview is most easily lost. In dense scores mark the brace of your own group with a coloured stroke — it costs a minute and saves much searching in rehearsal.