Re: Crescendos and melismas break \partcombine?

[David Wright]

On Tue 23 Aug 2016 at 08:36:29 (-0500), Karlin High wrote:
> Most music I print is for people used to SATB hymnals that have
> notes on common stems when possible. Unison parts have a single
> notehead with one stem up and one stem down. These conventions make
> me a heavy user of LilyPond's \partcombine and related features.
> 
> Now I am working on a piece with crescendos, one of which has a
> melisma for soprano but not alto. This seems to break the part
> combining, which results in unwanted extra note stems and crescendo
> marks. A code example is shown below. PNG output is attached.
> 
> I have tried using \partcombineChords instead of
> \partcombineAutomatic. "Chords" combines some things that
> "Automatic" is missing, but gets too aggressive with unison notes -
> they end up with 2 heads on 1 stem. And doing a
> \partcombineApartOnce seems to break the crescendo, with a warning
> about it being "unterminated."
> 
> Any idea how to keep the parts combined here? Thanks in advance

Could you not put the dynamics in a separate context? That also
has the advantage of allowing you to place them between the staves
for the organist and above the stave for the singers (so as not to
interfere with the lyrics).

Mind you, I don't have a lot of experience here as I use the ?English
style of hymnal, with tails up/down/up/down, as it's much clearer when
the rhythms get more complex.

What happens if you put the dynamics in only, say, the soprano part?

Cheers,
David.