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

[Valentin Villenave]

On 6/1/20, Rutger Hofman <rutger@cs.vu.nl> wrote:
> And I could contribute a bit on techniques to have >2 voices per staff,
> rhythmically homophonic or rhythmically polyphonic, especially in the
> context of divisi staves.

That would certainly be interesting. As you can see in the patch I
posted earlier in this thread, I’ve just been adding some stuff to the
Notation Reference:
https://gitlab.com/lilypond/lilypond/-/merge_requests/91/diffs?view=parallel

There’s no “orchestral music” subsection in NR 2, like there is for
guitar music, percussion etc.; I don’t think it would be wise to have
one because it’s linked with numerous other sections (I could be
convinced otherwise, but I’m really not sure how there’s a reasonable
argument to be made here).

What I’ve been doing instead is use NR 2.1.6.1 (“References for opera
and stage musicals” which is the closest we have to an Orchestra
subsection, and I added a link to that at the very top of NR section 2
“Specialist notation”.

The other main area where we can document stuff is, obviously, NR
1.6.3 “Writing parts” (that’s where I’ve added a new subsection about
\compressMMRests a few months ago). And NR 1.6.2.3 “Hiding staves”,
which is what this patch addresses (on top of recent additions by Jean
Abou Samra).  If you have other ideas that fit well with our current
structure and guidelines, don’t hesitate to chip in.

> What would be the best venue for this? Lilypond docs? User list? Scores
> of Beauty? If it gets into the Lilypond docs, it is there to "stay
> forever" which would be nice.

Sure; you’d need to take into account the most recent version though,
and not what you can find on lilypond.org -- actually, I’ve just
uploaded a recent doc build (that includes my patch about divisi
staves) on
http://lilydoc.villenave.net/Documentation/notation-big-page.html
in case you want to check it out.

Now, depending on what you have in mind, a blog entry might be
preferable, particularly to show off large, beautiful examples.  (Jean
wanted a Berlioz fragment in the NR; that’s about the maximum we can
afford, and even then its source code is not quoted verbatim.)

On that note:

> One elaborate example of my experiences is found in the score and parts
> of "3 Bruchstücke aus Wozzeck" by Alban Berg, see
> https://imslp.org/wiki/Wozzeck%2C_Op.7_(Berg%2C_Alban)

I appreciate that you’re making available your source code, but you
could simply embed it within the PDF files (LilyPond can do that
now!).  See for example
https://imslp.org/wiki/Oboe_Concerto_No.1_in_E-flat_major_(Herschel%2C_William)
(btw, I generally prefer publishing all individual parts as a single
PDF; people can then print whatever they want within it, but it makes
it *much* easier for ensembles out there in my experience,
particularly when IMSLP starts imposing a 15-second delay for all
downloads.)

Cheers,
-- V.