Orchestral strings, how to organise score and parts for divisi, solos, desks etc.

[Lib Lists]

Hello everybody,
a long-time user here, never been a power user though, but I'm back to
Lilypond after quite many years. I'm considering the possibility of
notating a future orchestral project using Lilypond. As I never used
it for anything bigger than chamber music, I'm learning how to
organise a big orchestral score by copying some existing examples
(which is a great excuse to finally analyse some interesting
orchestral passages).

I read the relevant sections in the documentation and some threads in
the user list, but still it's not clear to me what's the best strategy
to organise the material for the score and the parts, especially
regarding the strings. For example, in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring,
only in the first violins, there are up to 4 soloists, divisi (up to 4
parts), as well as separation by desk.

I'm considering approaching the task from the player's point of view,
i.e. by writing the music for each needed player / group of players.
For example, I'd start with the concertmaster's part, then duplicate
it and edit it to generate the music the second soloist, then the
other soloists, then desks, divisi and so on. Then with different
combining settings I'd add the first violins material to the score and
create the parts.

However, I know that \partcombine doesn't accept more than two voices,
so I guess I cannot (hypothetically) combine all the voices together
and let Lilypond sort out when the voices contain the same or
different materials and generate, when needed, additional voices or
staves.

The other option would be to create temporary staves when needed, but
I'm not sure which one is the best strategy.

Any suggestion and help would be really appreciated!

Cheers,

Lib