Different issues in working on opera scores

Dorico
#1
  • is there a way to have only the lyrics displayed on a part guide, without any notes?

-how can i hide a “corona” (fermata) on a single staff like a singer who goes on with a recit. while the rest of the orchestra holds on?

-if i have 2 Harps that sometimes have exact same notes and in some other points have different parts how can i have just one in the full score (when they are the same) with the “a 2” or “2 harps” displayed?

-if i want to have a “secco” recit. in an 18 century opera where multiple singers (with different clefs) are displayed in a single staff how can i have the clef change in the condensation of these singers? i have the same problem in condensing the horns in an orchestral piece, for ex.: horn 3,4 are condensed but in the middle of the system just the 4th horn plays with an F clef, although i write it in the 4th horn part it doesn’t come out in the complete condensed score.

-how can i change the meter of a single instrument but remaining within the same bar as anybody else does? ex.: orchestra is in 12/8 but 1st violins have to play in 4/4.

-finally: is there an option to have the singers staff without any “togheter” beaming? or better the beam changes with the lyrics? in many occasions the singing line must have separate notes because they have different syllables, and only seldom they have melismas.

I would be glad for someone’s help.

#2

There’s not a way to extract the lyrics exactly. You could edit the lyrics, copy-paste them into a text frame, and remove the hyphens, I suppose.

To remove a fermata from one staff, drag it off the page. You can alternatively create a playing technique that looks like a fermata and place it manually onto individual staves.

There are options for Unbeam via the context menu (right click, Beaming). You might want to add a key command for that. If you have a long passage unbeamed, say, in 4/4, you could display syllabic beaming by adding a time signature to the second bar of [1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1]/8, and hide that time signature.

I’ll let others answer the other questions, as I’m still figuring out how to search the forum!

#3

Welcome to the forum, @gies.andreas.

Dorico won’t condense grand staff instruments at the moment, so you can’t easily condense two harps together. What you can do if you wish is use manual staff visibility changes to hide one of the harp staves on systems where the material is identical.

Clef changes in general won’t be included in condensed music, especially if they are present in only one of the original players being condensed.

When you need to show 12/8 versus 4/4, I assume you expect dotted quarter in 12/8 to equal quarter in 4/4, which unfortunately Dorico doesn’t currently do natively. You’ll need to use hidden triplets in the 12/8 staff to make the music line up.

#4

For 12/8 - 4/4, here: 12/8 in a 4/4 meter

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#5

Thanks for the answer, indeed your advice for the fermata was good but i suggest thinking about changing slightly how fermatas add on staves, maybe using option key like for independent tempo markings or the possibility to hide the selected ones in the properties panel.

#6

Thank you @dspreadbury ,

compliments for the high level of this software and the many features it has.

As for the harp issue, after disabling one of the 2 harps form a page how can i display the staff tag so that who reads the score knows that that passage is for both?

Talking about the clefs, i have many passages where 4th horn plays notes in a bass clef but if i manually insert one also in the 3rd horn who’s not playing it would be displayed also in the relative part (having no reasons to be there).

Further thanks

#7

For labelling the harp, I guess you could add “a 2” as a text item on the harp that’s shown, and use the ‘Hide’ property to specify that it shouldn’t appear in the part layout.

Regarding the clefs, I guess we need to take another look at this area, and perhaps we can change our rules for when clefs should be included in the condensed staff, allowing a single clef through provided the other player(s) are inactive. I’ll talk to Andrew, the main condensing developer, about this at some point.

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#8

I work with secco recit all the time, and my solution is just to create a dedicated “recitatives” player. Though I would prefer to use condensing in the future, it currently leaves much to be desired, especially when 3+ characters have brief interjections over the course of a system. The recitatives player is also a good addition to the continuo part layout, since it adds the vocal line in recitatives and omits it during arias. The biggest problem with this approach is cautionary clef changes at ends of systems, which I would prefer to be absent. These can be “erased” by setting the custom scale to 1%, but if casting off changes between full score and vocal score layouts, the clef change will not be visible mid-system.

A solution that condenses well and also removes cautionary clef changes is to assign each role their own instrument within the same solo “cast” player, then edit Layout Options > Players > Instrument Changes as needed. Unfortunately, lyric baselines only consider the music of their own player when condensed, so you must manually adjust them system-by-system or accept that the baseline will shift constantly. Also it is not possible to hide staves from galley view in flows where they are not needed - so with a large cast, working in galley view becomes more challenging.

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