hello,
is there a clever way to have parts of text underlined with horizontal brackets?
I could not find examples in the smufl selection of glyphs nor do I think it is possible to drag a pedal line with hooks into a text frame… (even if they would look right)
Here an example:
I think you’d be best off editing PDFs in something like Affinity Designer, or Inkscape, or Illustrator.
Thanks Ben,
in the mean time I tried a little graphic element, which I created in Pages and used graphic frames on top of the text. So far it looks promising (the second one, at least), even if it is fiddly (I would need a couple of differently wide elements)
How can I create - let’s say in Inkscape - a graphical element, which I can stretch sideways, without it getting higher (hooks have to stay on same height)?
Out of curiosity: what is the meaning of these brackets?
Pjotr,
there is a reoccurring psalm tone (melody)
to which the text verses have to match.
One does not notate the music again for every verse,
instead the underscore shows when to change to the next note and the bracket shows that this text is been sung on the same note.
Hopefully you will understand my terrible explanation 
Is this a traditional form of text markup for German text? I know that psalm pointing in English and U.S. publications is different and (it seems) would be simpler to set.
Hello Derrek,
this sounds interesting. How do you do the psalm pointing?
I don’t think this way here is specifically german or swiss, it is just a way of trying to help the singers. I am interested in better suggestions.
Here are two examples. In the first, I have also seen a “tick mark” (straight apostrophe) used instead of the pipe barline to indicate the transition from the chanting tone to the measured notes.
Thanks k_b, your explanation is quite clear. Obviously the same problem has been addressed differently in different traditions.
Note, BTW, the interlocking unison whole notes in Derrek’s first example, which I actually find quite elegant. They are not in SMuFL yet…
Looking at the clefs of the first example (especially the bass clef) makes me think of Novello, although the American Psalter is/was published by H.W. Gray, IIRC a U.S. agent of Novello back in the day (1930 is the copyright date, but the books went through many printings).
Novello used a recognisable system of moveable type for printing music. It doesn’t always produce the most attractive results.
I’ve not seen the use of Bold text before. In the Anglican tradition, you just use | to show all the barlines, with dots showing the division within the bar (when it’s not just moving on the last syllable).
I grew up with the “single measure line, bold-face, and dot” pointing system, prevalent in the American Psalter as well as Hymnal 1940. I notice that the Hymnal 1982 (as well as More Hymns & Spiritual Songs that appeared in 1971) used tick-marks to indicate the measures after the chanting tone and added the horizontal brackets for multiple syllables on a single note. But by that time I was well past daily chanting of psalms, so I never noticed.
Neither Hymns Ancient and Modern Revised nor the English Hymnal from across the pond contained no Anglican chant, so I could not jog my memory what singers in England would have seen.
Interesting how these pointing systems evolved (or devolved).
Greetings from Cornwall, UK!
Is it possible to add horizontal triplet lines to Anglican chant psalm text (image attached) in Dorico?
Since you are placing the triplet signs over text, rather than music, I expect the answer is either “no” or “not without an enormous number of twisting and turning workarounds.”
My recollection of how pointing is interpreted is that usually the conductor tells the choir what style he or she wishes them to use. I know Kings used a much different style than our choir as a matter of course, and it had little to do with the way pointing was notated.
You might be able to produce brackets like that using either Metrico (see GitHub here) or using Bravura Text, but I agree with Derrk’s assessment that this is likely to be quite awkward to achieve.
I’m afraid Metrico won’t help here, because it can’t really produce tuplet brackets without notes.
Pointing just tells you where to change note. How the words are rhythmicised is given by the arm flapping and local convention. In the triplet example given: I would naturally perform any bar of three syllables as three equal value (but not equally stressed) notes. Whether there’s a pulse of ‘two’ somethings underneath, that the rest of the notes adhere to in some way is a different matter!
Incidentally, I’ve not seen the Bold = 2 syllables approach before. I would have put the first barlines after Lord and therefore, thus avoiding a melisma.
Ah, sounds as if you’ve seen Kings in action. It was an eye-opener for our choir to see the choral scholars conducting the chanting. Our choir used a much stricter metrical interpretation (quarters & half-notes) before we saw the flexibility Kings achieved.
The bold-face convention was used in the American Psalter. My recollection of the Anglican equivalent (although I cannot find any examples of Anglican pointing in my collection of old hymnals and psalters) is that Anglican pointing used multiple bar symbols for the several measures, whereas the American Psalter only used a bar to show the release from the chanting tone.
At close quarters. 
