Michael Haydn oratorio layout question

Dear Dorico users,

I have to finish today in hurry a project from Michael Haydn’s oratorio Der Kampf der Buße und Bekehrung. I have to prepare

  • full score,
  • orchestral parts and
  • vocal score.

The vocal score is ready with many formatting changes in Engrave mode: Staff and Note Spacing changes as well. Now I would have a question concerning part preparation.

The project contains 16 flows: 9 arias and 7 recitatives. In Recitatives (there are seccos and complicated accompagnatos too), it’s the request of the client to include the material of the singers in orchestral parts, above the played material by the concerning player, with reduced staff size. So in an accompagnato, the Violin I players have to see the staff/staves of the singer(s). In recitativo seccos, singer parts have to be included only in Violoncello e Basso layout.

How to include these singer’s staves in orchestral parts, without destroying Staff and Note Spacing changes in my Vocal Score layout?

You can add the Singers to the instrumental Parts. Then in the Layout Options, you can change the Player order so that the singers are above.

The Layouts are entirely separate, so creating a new Layout won’t affect the Vocal Score.

You can change the Scale of the Staff to a smaller size.

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  1. Add the singers to the Part Layout (say Violin 1)
  2. Change, if necessary, the order of players in the Layout options for each part
  3. In write or engrave mode, select something on the vocal staff, then right click > staff size > 75% (is a quite common value, but you can enter your own. Anything from 66-75% is common)
  4. Use the manual staff visibility feature if you don’t want to see the vocal part in certain movements.
2 Likes

Thank you so much, it seems to work!