Condensing single-bar rests into a multi-measure rest

[David Sumbler]

I have now finished setting the saxophone quartet, which is the first
substantial multi-instrument piece I have attempted with Lilypond.

I am very pleased with the result, and I am now at the stage of tweaking
the appearance of the output.

Searching in the Lilypond documentation, one problem I have not been
able to find a solution to is this: in the piece there are a few places
where one instrument is silent for several consecutive bars.  In the
score these obviously appear as single bar rests, but in the relevant
instrumental part I should like them to appear as a "multi-measure
rest".

The problem may be that I have used \parallelMusic for the whole score:
this seems an obvious way of doing things for a piece such as this with
a small number of instruments.  It has certainly been far easier to find
my way around the file than in my previous Lilypond efforts (e.g. a
piece for flute and piano), even though they were a lot shorter than
this one.

But looking at the documentation, I can only see multi-measure rests
appearing if they are entered as multi-measure quantities - e.g. R1*6.
If this is true, then the only way I can see to get the result I want,
would be to deconstruct my whole file and reassemble it as 4 separate
sections, one for each instrument.  This in itself will be a tedious
chore, but it also means the resulting file(s) will be much less easily
navigable when I make further additions and modifications.

Is there any way to get the result I want whilst still keeping the
\parallelMusic layout?

David