Re: Lyircs melsima line ending in interpunctation

[Hayden Muhl]

On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 1:29 AM, Jan-Peter Voigt <address@hidden> wrote:

well, I wouldn't call it illegal - but not appropriate to typeset music following "classical" rules like Bach or Händel (or Reger or Mahler or ...).
But for the Sinatra example: How would you notate it for an actor, impersonating him in a movie. Or you might think of some "modernistic" musical performance.
So I'd say, there are cases, where punctuation after the extender might be appropriate. So its good, Lily also can take care of that.

Cheers, Jan-Peter

I don't think this comes down to classical vs. non-classical rules. Regardless of musical style, you should never* see text set like this.

    For unto us a child is bo_______________________________rn

How you handle final consonants is going to be part of the stylistic convention of the music you're performing and personal choice. In classical singing the rule is to sing on the vowel and delay any off glides and final consonants. There are exceptions to this rule, like a comedic piece with long trilled r's, but those exceptions will not impact the notation. These types of performance practices will either be convention or a choice made by the performer. Similarly, when Sinatra sang "They say it's wonderful", it's very unlikely there was any hint in the sheet music to close to the n in "wonderful" early. That was simply a stylistic choice he made, and an appropriate one for the style of music. The text in the sheet music would have likely been indistinguishable from "classical" typesetting rules.

With regard to punctuation, I think if we don't put final consonants at the end of extenders, we shouldn't put punctuation at the end of extenders. But, that's just my opinion, and you know what they say about opinions.

* There is always the possibility of some avant garde composition with specific notation requirements, but here we are talking about typesetting standards, and I think it's reasonable to consider such a piece as an exception to the standard.