\lyrics to and \partcombine

[Bret Whissel]

I've been experimenting with lilypond for producing a book to be used at
2 week-long music conferences next summer.  Most of the music settings
in the book will be hymns (i.e., 4-part voicing on 2 staves, multiple
verses between the staves).  I'm very pleased with the engraving that
lilypond can generate, and I believe I'll be able to tune the results to
required specifications.

I have found that \partcombine basically "does the right thing" for
4-part vocal writing, with the following modifications:  (1)
part-combine-iterator.cc module has been modified to keep 2 stems at
unisons, and (2) the chord-threshold in
part-combiner.scm/determine-split-list has been increased to 12.

Unfortunately, I cannot think of a way to use both \lyricsto and
\partcombine.  Specifying the rhythmic attributes of syllables in a
Lyrics context does not yield satisfactory results (the results are
distinctly different from \lyricsto applied to the melodic voice). And 
obviously the voice contexts that remain after the \partcombine
operation cannot be used for \lyricsto.

I tried instantiating an "invisible" staff to duplicate the melodic
voice by creating a VoidStaff context with most engravers removed
(unsuccessful).  Similarly, I created VoidVoice context, but then the
context name cannot be located when \lyricsto is applied.

I'd appreciate any guidance or ideas to address this issue.

Bret Whissel

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