Problems engraving some unbeautiful music

[Peter Toye]

I'm trying to engrave the attached score fragment, but can't work out how to get it right. I agree with LP that it's not beautiful, but that's what the composer wrote.

The snippet below is as far as I've got, but there are too many clashes (not surprising). So the cross-staff chords aren't working and it's not merging the RH crochet (1/4 note) and quaver (1/8 note) noteheads. If you comment out the LH 2nd voice, the remaining voices work OK. 

I suspect that shortening the stem of the LH 1st voice quavers to get them out of the way of the 2nd voice would help, but I can't see how to do this. I tried overriding the beamed-stem-shorten property (not very explicitly documented in the Internals manual) but this made no difference.

\version "2.19.52"
\language "english"
\layout {
  \context {
    \PianoStaff
    \consists #Span_stem_engraver
  }
}

{
  \new PianoStaff {
    <<
      \set PianoStaff.instrumentName = #"Piano"
      \new Staff = "rh" {
        \time 3/4
        \key gs \minor
        \clef treble
        \relative c' {
          \override PhrasingSlur.direction = #UP
          b \( cs d\) |
          d\( \change Staff = "lh" \stemUp {b <g d'> \) }|
        }
      }

      \new Staff = "lh" {
        \time 3/4
        \key gs \minor
        \clef bass
        \relative c
        {
          <<
            { \crossStaff {f4~ f4 f4 | g} s s | }
            \\
% comment out the next line and it works
            { \octaveCheck g, g2 g4 | <f b>2 <e b'>4 |}
            \\
            {
              \octaveCheck f
% next line makes no difference
\once \override Beam.beamed-stem-shorten = #'(0.3 0.3 0) 
              \stemDown f8[ \stemUp b,~] 
              \stemDown b[ b] \stemDown f'[ \stemUp b,] |
              \stemDown g'8[ \stemUp d]_~ \stemDown d[ g_~] g \stemUp d]
            }
          >>

        }
      }
    >>
  }
}
 
Regards,

Peter
mailto:address@hidden
www.ptoye.com

Snippet3.jpg
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