Re: Polyphonic repeats with lyrics (and rests)

[Simon Albrecht]

Hi David,

On 19.09.2015 06:18, David Wright wrote:
> I noticed some erroneous alto lyrics invading recent CPDL editions of
> Farmer's Fair Phyllis. I think the cause was some overenthusiastic
> factoring of the lyrics using tagging. So I thought I'd run up a copy
> myself, producing folded/unfolded scores from one source file.
>
> However I found, like others, that repeat barlines and voltas popped up
> all over the place as soon as I entered the lyrics into the correct
> structure. The Notation reference manual is not much help because none
> of its examples involves either rests or more than one vocal line.
>
> While none of the workarounds I've found on the web does the job
> satisfactorily, I think it's unduly pessimistic to say, "Unfortunately
> there is no clear recipe for entering lyrics and repeats which will
> work in all circumstances, as all the suggestions are work-arounds due
> to there being no well-defined interface in LilyPond for handling
> repeats in lyrics."
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2015-03/msg00866.html

It isn’t unduly pessimistic, but realistic. The ‘right’ example you gave 
is pretty good except that it doesn’t work with \lyricsto. However it 
still does not offer a good way to have different texts for the 
different repeats – I think that’s what Trevor meant by speaking of a 
‘well-defined interface’. Such an interface would need to
– be straightforward in entering
– work with \lyricsto
– allow using the same text for all repeats (using \repeat volta {} 
\alternative {{}{}})
or different text, with simple consecutive lyrics entry and automated 
fitting into the repeat structure (at least that’s how I figure it), or 
with a \repeat lyrics {} command, or something else.
– print braces {} around text lines for different repeats, and 
vertically center-align neighbouring lyrics without repeat (within one 
stanza this is commonly found in hymns in the Bar form; for complex 
multiple-stanza layouts see e.g. Distler, Mörike-Chorliederbuch on 
IMSLP). Perhaps \repeat stanza {} might be introduced. Automatic 
printing of stanza numbers?

So this is a really large topic, and until we have someone able and 
willing to design and implement such a feature, we are bound to workarounds.

As I said, you gave a good example there and it may well make sense to 
include it as a ‘docs’ LSR snippet. You might have a look at the 
Contributor’s Guide (via <http://lilypond.org/development.html>) for that.

Yours, Simon