Re: Add prefix to lyrics

[Alexander Kobel]

[repost to -user; I guess the attachments were too large.  What's the 
maximum message size for the mailing list?]

On 2010-09-03 10:47, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> > will font's hyphen be acceptable for lyrics as a _minimally_
> > acceptable.
>
> I think the answer is yes.  However, this is my feeling and not based
> on facts.  Maybe someone has some time to investigate that by checking
> various vocal scores of various publishers.

I just checked with Carus, Edition Peters (Schott), Breitkopf & Härtel 
and Bärenreiter Urtext scores.  (Sorry, no scans, just digicam photos 
for now.)

<http://www.a-kobel.de/images/carus.jpg>
I'm not very fond of Carus prints (though they have good ones) and don't 
really consider them as guidance, so I keep this short: They leave out 
hyphens if necessary, and they all have the same length.  They seem to 
use the hyphen of the current font, since they have different 
thicknesses in the italics and the upright fonts for the different 
languages (nearly unrecognizable in the digicam shots).

<http://www.a-kobel.de/images/peters.jpg>
In the Peters, hyphens seem to have all equal length, and equal 
position.  It's hard to tell the thickness due to the printout (the ink 
slightly erodes (correct term?)), but it looks like the usual hyphen of 
the font, compared to the introductory preface.  If necessary, the 
hyphen is left out completely.

<http://www.a-kobel.de/images/baerenreiter.jpg>
In the Bärenreiter editions I have here, such a tight setting is _very_ 
rare.  Scores have a lot of white space, at the cost of thicker books 
and more page turns.  Even if spacing is close, they try to shift the 
syllables a bit to gain free space.  But I finally found some situations.
They _seem_ (can't really guarantee, again the ink is slightly washed 
out) to apply kerning to the hyphen if necessary: in "sol - vet", the 
dash is lowered to nearly the middle of the horizontal line of the "e" 
and the baseline, and shifted under the left part of the "v" to gain 
some space.  (Sorry, I closed the book and don't remember the right page 
for a scan.)
If even this does not work, the hyphen is left out altogether, and - if 
still necessary - the characters are squeezed more than normal.  (In the 
attached file, check out "ihnen geht ein" in the top right corner, 
compared to the second system's lyrics.)
Again, the length of the dashes seem constant throughout the book; the 
glyph looks exactly the same as in normal text in the prefatory matter.

<http://www.a-kobel.de/images/breitkopf.jpg>
Breitkopf & Härtel certainly do not use the font's dash glyph: Their 
hyphens are on the baseline, as the extenders (at least in this print of 
Brahms: "Ein deutsches Requiem"), which looks very odd.  Lengths are all 
the same, and if necessary, hyphens are just left out.

For all publishers: If hyphens are left out, all publishers write the 
syllables as close together as if it were just one syllable.  I could 
not find thin spaces in between, which sometimes appear in LilyPond's 
output.


On a sidenote, I'm surprised that none of the publishers I remember 
right out of my head seems to use a condensed font for lyrics - or they 
may just have some that good that I just don't recognize them as 
condensed fonts at the first glance.


Cheers,
Alexander