Re: Changing voice order...

[Alexander Kobel]

On 2016-11-03 16:32, David Wright wrote:
> On Tue 01 Nov 2016 at 15:36:56 (-0000), Phil Holmes wrote:
> > I'm concerned by this.  I don't believe I have ever used more than 2
> > voices in choral music: typically the sops/tenors get voice one, and
> > the alto/basses get voice two.  If any of these is doubled (e.g.
> > sop1 and sop2) then they are shown as chorded notes, still in their
> > normal voice.  If it gets more complex than this, then current vocal
> > music almost always resorts to a stave per vocal group.  It looks to
> > me like the proposal would end up with voiceTwo having upstems.  I
> > am very much against that.  It would mean I would have to update a
> > lot of music to make it usable.  I don't use concert-ly 'cos I find
> > it a pain on Windows.
> >
> > Who uses four voices on one stave in vocal setting?
>
> Well, I thought, if anyone does, it'll be the Novello Book of Carols.
> It's all so over-compressed. But I could only come up with what's
> technically three, I suppose. (I only looked for fun.)

I have few four-voices-per-staff examples, but almost all could be 
written as chords. With chords, I know quite a few that go to four or 
even more vocal notes notated on a single staff. I guess simply because 
vocal music has to have lyrics assigned to it (well, exceptional 
contemporary pieces aside), and you only have so many options to put 
them (above and below the staff). If rhythms (and, hence, lyrics) 
diverge noticeably, I've always seen split staves.

One exceptional example are the final measures of Jan Sandström's "Det 
är en ros utsprungen", where the soprano splits up from two to four 
voices. The rhythms are coherent, and the notes are wholes, so 
everything looks like chords; still, it's notated as four voices because 
the legato slurs indicate which section is broken up, and which voice 
goes to which note in the next chord. No lyrics there, by the way, only 
humming.


Cheers,
Alexander