Re: Undertie in lyrics to show no breath

[David Wright]

On Fri 22 Jul 2022 at 12:52:17 (+0200), mancunius wrote:
> On 22 Jul 2022, at 10:41, Jean Abou Samra <jean@abou-samra.fr> wrote:
> > Le 22/07/2022 à 10:27, Simon Albrecht a écrit :
> >> On 20/07/2022 12:34, mancunius wrote:
> >>> Hello. In the following example I want the undertie to be placed between 
> >>> the 2 “O sacrum convivium” lines of lyrics, to indicate that no breath 
> >>> should be taken by the singers - as per the normal choral convention. 
> >>> (cf. the commented-out \breathe command in the music itself.) As it 
> >>> currently compiles, the undertie is placed beneath the word “O” of the 
> >>> second phrase.
> >> 
> >> This is because the markup command \undertie requires an argument and so 
> >> it is applied to the following syllable.
> >> 
> >> What I would suggest is a dotted or dashed slur between the notes like 
> >> this:
> >> 
> >> { \once\dashedSlur cs( d) }

> > Well, as David W. mentioned, there is predefined syntax with "~" to create 
> > a tie. Its length is fixed, however.
> > 
> > { c'1 1 }
> > \addlyrics { aah~ aah }
> > 
> > Do you think it's conventional to make the tie extend to the next syllable?
> 
> Thank you for the replies. The lyric tie doesn’t need to extend to the next 
> syllable, but it looks odd when appended to the left syllable at the same 
> time as displacing it; it looks like an error, 

Sure, I pointed that out; and as I implied, for precision you need to
make adjustments in X position. It just depends on who's the target
of your engraving.

> especially if the left syllable were to stretch across more than one note as 
> in the revised example below.

Well that actually solves the alignment problem, because it forces
left-alignment of the lyric.

> The purpose of a dotted slur between the notes is ambiguous, so I’d rather 
> not take that route.

… and when the piece is strophic, it doesn't actually specify which
verses carry over, particularly if the engraver wishes to preserve,
but contradict, the text's punctuation (as here).

> My preference is to have a lyric tie equally spaced between the two 
> syllables: it looks elegant and its purpose is clear.

I suppose a scheme expert might be able to hack that out of a fake
lyric hyphen rendered as a slur.

(Technically, these are lyric slurs, of course.)

But my preference is attached, because that's the syllable affected.
That said, if there's a new line involved, I prefix the second
syllable with a slur too, as a reminder when the eye has moved ahead.
Again, adjustments ….

Anyway, when following a tied note, perhaps pick a method that suits.
There's a snippet attached (the ! example is just to document that the
padding argument is optional).

Cheers,
David.

extslur.ly
Description: Text document

extender.ily
Description: Text document

extslur.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document