On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 1:56 PM, David Kastrup
<address@hidden> wrote:
Hayden Muhl <
address@hidden> writes:
> Regardless of musical style, you should never* see text set like this.
>
> For unto us a child is bo_______________________________rn
>
> How you handle final consonants is going to be part of the stylistic
> convention of the music you're performing and personal choice.
you are supposed to be singing in the first place. Fortunately, at
least the punctuation can't influence the phonetic value half a word
earlier.
No, not even in Italian. It is always important to have the full context of the syllable when singing a melismatic phrase. Imagine if you saw this in your music.
tor - na_________________
Only to turn the page and see
_____________r
"Torna" and "tornar" are both valid words. It does the singer a disservice to hide the end of the word at the end of the extension line.
While pronunciation of vowels do not depend on their trailing consonants in Italian as much as they do in English, putting the consonant at the end of the extension line can still serve to hide important information. The syllabification of double consonants in Italian puts the first of the two consonants on the previous syllable, and the second on the latter syllable. The syllabification of "anno" would look like "an - no". The consonant at the end of a syllable is treated differently than a consonant at the beginning of a syllable, so it is important for the singer to know that this will be coming. Failing to pronounce the double consonant correctly turns the word "anno" (year) into "ano" (anus).
One corner case I have seen is where there is a final syllable on a grace not after the melisma. So, instead of "tor - nar________" you might have something like "tor - na - - - - re". This may have been in a French song, but I can't remember. Even so, it was a case of telling the singer how to treat the final syllable of a word, not how to treat the final consonant of a syllable.
I suppose one place where printing "bo___rn" and "na___r" might be of use is in an instructional book for beginning singers to illustrate how to treat trailing consonants. I would see this as a valid reason for Lilypond to support this feature, but not a valid reason for publishers to use this in scores meant to be performed from.
- Hayden