Re: many-lyrics separator (slightly OT)

[Alexander Kobel]

On 2015-01-05 15:03, Alicuota618 wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Considering a choir-setting with many stanzas, the text makes this is
> a little bit ugly to read, specially for amateur-choirs in stressing
> situation (concert...).
>
> How does engravers eventually make these lyrics more readable?
> I think of four possibilities:
> - repeating the stanza # at each system, but I dont want this solution...
> - make some stanzas in italic
> - change some stanzas for sans-serif
> - draw a line-separator every 3-4 stanzas (but how to do that with ly?)
>
> Did somebody found any hymn-setting with this kind of typesetting?

Hi,

I've never seen option 3 (sans-serif), but all the others.  The one I 
like most is 4, using a little bit of whitespace (instead of a 
rule-/line-separator) after three stanzas.  This can easily be achieved 
by overriding nonstaff-nonstaff-spacing.minimum-distance for the last 
stanza of each such group.
Option 1 can help in addition, in particular if for some reason only 
some of the stanzas are sung.  (Happens more often than not for those 
pieces in churches here.)  Italics I prefer if text is given in several 
languages.

If you go for readability, however...  As a singer, I prefer if 
additional stanzas are written after the score, like a poem, and only <= 
3 are printed between the staves.  More than 4 stanzas (at most, and 
only if there is no fifth one) are too difficult for me to catch easily. 
 In particular, if you have a usual SATB setting with >= 2 staves, the 
lower voices notoriously have trouble with large distance between notes 
and first stanza.
OTOH, if the singers get the melody after three stanzas, it suffices to 
have them as a "poem" (in particular if you can avoid page turns in 
between).  If they don't get the melody, they have to rehearse the piece 
anyway to coordinate lyrics even if you print eleven stanzas below the 
notes, and once they rehearsed, the "poem" will be enough again.
Just my two pence...


HTH,
Alexander