Re: A solution I've invented for a SATB choir

[Simon Albrecht]

Hello Vincenzo,

interesting idea. It might increase organisation expenses, though, if 
you have to provide two different scores instead of just one full score.
Another way to save vertical space is the one used in the 19th century 
complete editions of Mendelssohn, Schumann, and many other comparable 
choral scores (to be found on IMSLP): voices which share (or almost 
share) their rhythms get only one lyrics line between their staves. 
Even, if this is true of all voices, the lyrics will be printed below 
the soprano staff only. And if there are multiple stanzas, they will be 
distributed between the voices, which makes an enormous advantage for 
the engraving.
I find this very reasonable and economic. (I generally think that these 
editions are among the greatest examples of music typesetting we have, 
so it’s always worth considering.)
You’ll almost certainly (at least with amateurs) get complaints from 
choir singers about too large distances between text and music. But I 
think this is likely a matter of habits and needn’t be taken too 
seriously. An alternative would be writing the single lyrics line not 
below the soprano, but between the middle staves, that is for SATB, 
between the alto and tenor staves.
Another question is how to code this in ly if there are more polyphonic 
passages which require separate lyrics again. I tend towards defining a 
command which blanks out the superfluous lyrics (\override 
LyricHyphen.stencil = ##f etc.), and correspondingly shows them again 
(\revert). It separates the presentation from the content better. Maybe 
even use one command for multiple lyric lines using \context (you may 
read that up in the NR if you’re not familiar with it) – and insert that 
command into the soprano staff context instead of a lyrics context.
Just a few thoughts of mine, I hope they make sense.

HTH, Simon

Am 17.10.2014 um 22:11 schrieb Son_V:
> Hi, I made a score for a SATB choir; I had two choices: to make it in a
> single page, but really crowded ... or to make it in two pages. I choose
> another way; I divided it in SA and TB voices. I made the Soprano+alto part
> whit single staff and grouped the TB voices WHITHOUT words; and for the
> Tenor+Bass their single staff and grouped the SA voices WHITHOUT words. So I
> got a two page score, but with a single page of music for S+A and T+B. I
> would like to know what do you think of this "trick". Thanks.
>
>
>
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