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Polyphony and (disappearing) lyrics


From: Romel Anthony S. Bismonte
Subject: Polyphony and (disappearing) lyrics
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 02:30:15 +1000

I came into this question right at the end of typesetting a piece.

Here's the (minimal) code:

\version "2.10.25"
\paper {
   ragged-right = ##t
}
\score {
   <<
       \new Voice="twinkle" \relative c' {
           c c g' g
           <<
               { a4 a g2 } \\
               { f4 f e2 }
           >>
           \bar "|."
       }
       \new Lyrics \lyricsto "twinkle" {
           Twin -- kle, twin -- kle, lit -- tle star.
       }
   >>
}

(By the way, I have grown to respect minimal examples. The piece where I have this issue is a monster with three long lyric lines and a dozen massive tweaks which, thankfully, all work. ^_^ That is, except for this one.)

This gets processed without any problems, but the output is unexpected:

|----------------|----------------|!
|----------------|-o---o----------|!
|---------o---o--|-o---o---o------|!
|-o---o----------|---------o------|!
Twinkle,twinkle,

Now, after reading the section on basic polyphony (6.3.3) in the venerable manual, I discovered that the polyphonic sections {} in the << >> brackets get their own Voice contexts, named "1", "2", and so on in the order they are declared. So I tried changing the lyrics section to this:

       \new Lyrics \lyricsto "twinkle" {
           Twin -- kle, twin -- kle,
       }
       \new Lyrics \lyricsto "1" {
           lit -- tle star.
       }

(Since voices "1" and "2" would be singing the same words, I did not give words to voice "2".)

The change is less unexpected, but still wrong:

|----------------|----------------|!
|----------------|-o---o----------|!
|---------o---o--|-o---o---o------|!
|-o---o----------|---------o------|!
Twinkle,twinkle,
                 lit-tle star.

I suspect that it's because I'm declaring a new lyric to be placed after the first lyric. Maybe the solution is to have the same musical structure in the lyrics as there is in the main voice. This approach worked for other types of constructs that I used, notably repeats. Heartened, I changed the Lyrics lines to this:

       \new Lyrics \lyricsto "twinkle" {
           Twin -- kle, twin -- kle,
           << { lit -- tle star. } \\
              {}
           >>
       }

But I get the same results as the first time, with the "little star" words missing.

Then I saw that you can switch the voice a lyric is associated to in (7.3.7.3). So I tried that one, changing my lyrics part to this, taking note to do the \set command "one syllable too early" as stated in the manual:

       \new Lyrics \lyricsto "twinkle" {
           Twin -- kle, twin --
           \set associatedVoice = 1
           kle, lit -- tle star.
       }

This doesn't work either, and the "little star" lyric doesn't make it into the output just like in the first situation.

How do I sneak lyrics into that section? Recognizing that the music fragments in the << >>s are in their own voice contexts, how can I place the lyrics for those notes on the same line as the lyrics for the main voice? If there is no way, I can live with the second situation (the one where "little star" is a little ways down)... but it /would/ be nice to get them all on the same line. ^_^

Thanks in advance for any input.

Romel




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