Condensing Very Long Rests (Hundreds of Bars) into a Single Tacet

Dorico
1

I’m currently working on an opera in which some instruments have up to 1000 bars of rest (stage music, organ, etc.). Is there a way to condense, say, 960 bars into a single Tacet before the instrument actually enters? After all, Tacet until the end is also possible.

Ideally, I’d like to do this directly in the project rather than using a separate file or an additional flow - in other words, without a workaround.

Thanks in advance!

1 Like
2

A Tacet should only be used if the instrument either doesn’t play at all, or doesn’t play for the remainder of a piece.

If your opera is broken up into multiple pieces, you can remove instruments from the flow to give them a Tacet instruction.

If your opera is through-composed, the musician needs to know exactly how many measures, the time signatures, etc., and should NOT have a “Tacet until…” notification. It is extremely poor engraving.

3 Likes
3

Thanks for your explanations, but does Dorico actually offer such an option or not?
Btw: it’s extremely poor engraving to hand an off-stage musician six pages of rests.

4

A possible solution/workaround without a separate file or an additional flow is the following:

  • Create a tacet until graphic slice in the same house style as the project.
  • Create a custom Default page template and insert this graphic slice on the top.
  • Insert that page template at the page you want to show the music.
  • Enable the tacet to end appearance in Engraving Options.
  • Adjust the page numbers if needed and export the layout to PDF.
  • Edit the PDF by deleting the unwanted pages at the beginning.
5

Thank you, Vadian.
And yet another workaround. I’m really starting to feel that Dorico still needs a few more years before it can be used reliably for large-scale projects.

6

My recollection was that even after 30 years, Finale still required work-arounds for many things. The flexibility to do work-arounds when really necessary is a strength.

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7

I’ve never worked with Finale, but I have used other music notation software for just as long. In the end, I stuck with Dorico because, out of all the bad solutions, it’s the best one. And yet it still annoys me that you constantly have to tinker with things - and not just with features that are rarely needed, like in this case.