Re: best practice(s) for divisi choral works

[Vaughan McAlley]

On 25 December 2014 at 13:23, Kieren MacMillan
<address@hidden> wrote:
> Hello all!
>
> I’m about to dive in to [re]engraving a choral piece.
>
> Like many choral works, it regularly alternates between “choral unison” 
> (which can effectively be displayed using a single staff), homophonic 
> sections (which require two staves), and polyphonic stuff (which require more 
> than two staves, usually four). For example, the first verse of my piece 
> requires a minimum of
>     A) 1 staff for mm 1-8
>     B) 2 staves for mm 9-12
>     C) 4 staves for mm 13-16
>     D) 1 staff for mm 18-19
>
> There are at least two obvious ways to code this, with the intention of 
> optimizing the code:
>
> 1. Write the soprano (melody) part out in full, quote it in the other four 
> chorus parts during sections A and D (i.e., for the “unisons”), and use 
> \showStaff (\showLyrics, resp.) and \letStaffVanish (\letLyricsVanish, resp.) 
> to help Lilypond make appropriate layout decisions.
>
> 2. Write everything in one \DivisibleStaff, splitting out the parts as 
> necessary.
>
> What is the consensus (if there is one) about the best practice?
> It seems to me that #1 is better — but that may simply be because I don’t 
> know the \DivisibleStaff mechanism that well.
> (I always use the current unstable/development version, in case that makes a 
> difference to the answer.)
>
> Thanks,
> Kieren.
> _______________________
>
> Kieren MacMillan, composer
> www:  <http://www.kierenmacmillan.info>
> email:  address@hidden
>
>
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I did an arrangement that moved between 1, 2, 4 and 5 staves for the
choir. I separated everything into TenorOne, TenorTwo, UnisonTenor and
TwoPartChoirBottom (for example), with spacer rests (or occasionally
whole bar rests where appopriate). Then I included separate
ChoirStaffs for the 4-5 part choir and the two-part choir to allow for
different instrument names. Then, in the choir parts I included
\breaks where the format changed (not in \global so that instrumental
parts didn’t include \breaks where they didn’t need them.

It all worked pretty well, though it would probably make an
experienced programmer’s eyes bleed.

Vaughan