I have created a small markup command for an ornament, which appears in engraved music of its time as a small "x", meaning a lower mordent. Another common ornament would be written as a sort of large comma, and this meant a trill, starting on the upper note, and increasing in speed. This is for late 17th and early 18th century French music for the viola da gamba.
The point is that these ornaments should go next to the notes to which they refer, and not necessarily above or below the staff. This little example of a few bars indicate some of the difficulties, taken from the 4th book of "Pièces de Violes" by Marin Marais, published in Paris in 1717:
You'll see various bowing marks (actually there's only one used here: "e", which stands for the French "enfler": "swelling"; that is, a bow-stroke without the customary "attack"), x's and commas for ornaments, numbers with dots indicating fingers and which string, and next to the double-stopped d and f-sharp in the third and final bars what looks like a broken cross; this is a "barre", indicating a single finger laid over two or more strings at once.
What I'm trying to do is to retain as much as possible of this notation in Lilypond. I could probably bodge up quite a lot of this if there was some way of placing expressions next to the notes themselves - but I can't find out how to do that.
Any advice would be gratefully received!
Thank you very much,
Alasdair
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