Re: Stanzas over staves

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi again,

Given your example:

> measure 1: some notes
> measure 2: text: This is the story of Max and Moritz
> measure 3: some notes
> measure 4: text: Moritz
> measure 5,6: more notes
> measure 7: text AH, how oft we read or hear of Boys we almost stand in
> fear of! For example, take these stories of two youths, named Max and
> Moritz (as stack of lines)
> measure 8-20: many notes

it looks like you simply want to stack the text as markup above a measure-long 
rest (with fermatas in all parts, I would assume?). That's definitely a simple 
situation, easy to accomplish in Lilypond. Maybe try something like

%%%  SNIPPET BEGINS
\version "2.19.80"
\language "english"

musicandtext = {
  c'4 d' e' f'
  \tweak minimum-length #24 R1\fermataMarkup^\markup \override #'(line-width . 
20) \override #'(baseline-skip . 2.3) \wordwrap { This is a very long bit of 
dialogue, which will wrap to the length you want. }
}

\score { \musicandtext }
%%%  SNIPPET ENDS

Of course, if you’re doing a lot of it, you should make a function which does 
all the appropriate things for you. Syntactic sugar is the best kind of sugar.  
=)

Hope this helps!
Kieren.
________________________________

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