Re: [Best Practices] splitting and combining choral parts

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your response…
But people are apparently missing my point/question.

I’m not asking for advice about LyricExtenders, or whether this particular 
score should be in four staves, or about the spacing of the staves and lyrics, 
or autobeaming, or anything like that.

The closest point discussed, in terms of actual relevance, is whether or not 
lyrics should be included below all staves or only between S+A and T+B or 
whatever. THAT — or, more to the point, the mechanism(s) required to make that 
choice easy to do and undo — is what I’m interested in working on.

> I find switches between the number of staves for short periods
> (i.e. a few bars this, a few bars that and another few bars some
> other way) confusing and it takes too much of my precious attention
> when performing.

See my other response.

As just one randomly-selected example: a quick scan of the full score of “Peter 
Grimes” (I have a lovely hardbound Boosey & Hawkes edition) shows a wide range 
of frenching for the vocals (chorus and solists), including systems with 4 
choral staves (S+A+T+B) 3 choral staves (SA+T+B), and 1 choral staff (“CHOR”). 
To include the maximum number of staves on every page — which would be at least 
13, including all soloists, etc. — would obviously be ludicrous.

Cheers,
Kieren.

p.s.

> Last not least for vocal lines I always turn off autoBeam and manually
> put beams to groups that are sung on a single syllable. For my singers
> eyes that strongly helps to keep words and music in a proper flow.

I would never do this: in all but the rhythmically simplest music, 
beam-to-melisma does nothing but make sight-reading and rehearsing more 
difficult.
________________________________

Kieren MacMillan, composer
‣ website: www.kierenmacmillan.info
‣ email: address@hidden