Removing (or not) empty staves

Hi -

Thanks for all your work, for helping users, and for LilyPond itself. I've been using LilyPond and Frescobaldi for a long time, mostly on Linux/Ubuntu.

I'm currently running LilyPond 2.24.0 and Frescobaldi 3.2 on Linux/Ubuntu.

I'm trying to transcribe the viola parts for Saint-Saens' Le Deluge for my personal use, but trying to keep it close to the original. My problem is that there are 8 lines of score with single staves, and then multiple lines with Solo and Tutti staves. The first line with two staves has all rests in the Solo staff. I can get LilyPond to go single staff for the opening, but I can't get it to do that and keep the first (all rests) line of the Solo part. I'm attaching a photo of the original score where it switches from single staff to two staves per system, as well as two .ly files and their PDFs from my attempts to reproduce the original. It's not a make or break problem, but I would like to know what I might be doing wrong or what I might do differently. I'm using \Staff \RemoveEmptyStaves in \context.

Thanks in advance for any attention and/or help,

Ralph

______

Ralph Palmer

Seattle

USA

(he, him, his)

palmer.r.violin@gmail.com

From:	Ralph Palmer
Subject:	Removing (or not) empty staves
Date:	Tue, 17 Jan 2023 19:10:28 -0800