Hi all
I have two questions regarding visual formatting of divisi passages.
First, how can I achieve formatting like in Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe Suite No. 2 as shown below? The string sections are divisi, but when the divisi sections play the exact same material, the notes are not notated on both staves, but rather on one staff, while the bottom staff has “slash” markings. This draws attention to where divisi parts are true divisi and where they are not (and it doesn’t make sense to switch back and forth between divisi and unison for such small passages of unison playing.
Second: how can I achieve formatting like Schoenberg’s Op. 16 shown below, where the Cello section plays in unison, then halfway through the page, they switch to divisi, which is indicated visually with a brace:
Dorico doesn’t provide automatic support for either of these appearances, so you’ll need to resort to manual intervention in both cases. To show slashes, you’ll need to keep the instruments divisi rather than restoring unison at that point, and then manually add the slashes to the lower divisi section. For the Schoenberg example, you would again need to keep the instruments divisi so that you can show the first cello section empty in the unison passage. Dorico doesn’t provide a stretchable brace that you can create at the present time, so you’ll need to approximate that using a text item using one of the braces from Bravura (or your music font of choice) and make it the appropriate size. It will probably look rather wider than you would ideally like.
Thanks for the information— how would I go about manually adding the slashes like in the ravel example? This would involve visually removing the music from the staff as well to achieve the blank 5 line staff appearance. In engrave mode when I select music on one of the divis staves when the material is actually unison, both the upper and lower staff content is selected. So should I actually create a divisi with one section having rests rather than playing the same music? (doing this would mean the parts are wrong though, since the parts should show all music, no slashes that are useful in the score but not in the parts). Then in engrave mode make the rests white to disappear, and add in slashes as an imported jpg?
There’s no built-in feature for this, as I’ve said. You could add the slashes any number of ways: you could simply type them in as text and position them manually (switch off the Avoids collisions property if you do this), or perhaps create a line and position it in the middle of the staff with the slash symbol as a central annotation.
But yes, you will end up with incorrect parts if you follow this approach. I wonder whether it’s really an absolute necessity to reproduce this specific notation exactly as shown in the original engraving? If it is, you’ll need to produce the full score and the parts separately.
