Re: Maybe bug? Lyrics on a tied note at end of system

[David Rogers]

Carl Peterson <address@hidden> writes:

> I'm curious...did you happen to notice any examples where the engraver
> chose to split the measure that might be indicative of an approach? If
> I were to have done something like this for a hymnal/songbook, I would
> have split the measure and would have kept the entire lyrical phrase
> on a single system.

I haven't found any examples with ties exactly as we've been
discussing. It seems styles or opinions have changed over time or varied
between publishers. For a good possible example, I turned to the old
Peters score of Schubert's Ständchen (Horch, horch, die Lerch') - nearly
every line of text begins with an upbeat - and the engraver kept each
bar intact. In the same volume, the beginning of Das Wandern (first song
of Die schöne Müllerin) has the piano introduction and the single word
"Das" on the first line, and the end of the last page has (looking a bit
lonely) the first word of the next verse and a segno. However, in the
1988 Baerenreiter/Henle set of Schubert songs, vol 7, the engraver seems
quite willing to break bars in exactly the way I think you mean - for
example, in "Irdisches Glück" the piano introduction finishes on beat
three-and-a-half, and the singer's eighth note is on the next line,
where you and I both know it belongs. :) In the same vein, the middle of
the verse of that song has a new theme that starts on beat
two-and-three-quarters, and the page break is comfortably set at that
point in the bar. But then only a few pages further on in the book, in
Am Fenster, a similar thing might have been done but was not done -
there are "widowed" eighth notes on several lines. It seems to me that
breaking bars in vocal music has never been consistently practiced by
any good publisher except for the publishers of well-made hymn books,
who seem to have done it as a matter of course. If they ARE being
consistent, then they must have run into more important reasons why NOT
to break the bars, in those other songs; and I don't know what those
reasons are. My understanding of the engraving process and its rules is
sketchy at best.

-- 
David R