Having now been presented here in two different publication examples, this might actually be spawned into an – utterly, utterly urgent – feature suggestion. (Would sure be interesting to consider with regard to the playback implementation.)
Does this carry over onto the next system?
Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. No, it’s just in the preamble. Probably sufficient though, right? That would be a heck of a lot of clutter on every system…
It’s what is happening in Tim’s example.
As someone who does chant every day and will be rehearsing Latin propers with a choir in 23 minutes, I’d like to suggest that you allow the tick barline to be in both hands. There’s no reason for it to only be in the top part. Those little anchor points will be just as helpful for the left hand as the right.
Well, I fiddled around with custom key signatures a bit and I’m pretty sure it’s possible, but I’m not smart enough to do it (or maybe I don’t care enough…!)
I don’t know why it’s notated that way, but these are (some of) Dom André Mocquereau’s accompaniments. It is clearly intentional; it would have been just as easy for them place the barlines in both hands, but other than the fact that some or all of the left hand parts frequently tie through, I don’t know what the intent was.
The question is whether you are doing this for Dom (i.e. for a published version) or just helping out your organist (a private copy with which you can take some liberties). If the latter, the goal might be to make the music as clear to the performer as possible. Ultimately in that case helping the performer realize the details of how the music sounds may be more important than how artful the engraving is.
The original probably looked more like this. What you have is a later realisation so I think there is no imperative to make it look as close as possible to your copy - except a desire to make the software do the most it can. NB, this photo is your Kyrie. Keys as we know them and thus key signatures were not how people conceptualised music, neither was the 18th century scale system or even what we call modes - so this is all a later interpretation. as @Derrek suggests, make it work for your performer.
I understand why Dom [Mocquereau] did it, but I still disagree with it editorially. He’s trying to only show barlines in relation to the original melody; the problem is he’s adding a bunch of notes to that, and, oh—by the way—your left hand needs to know what measure you’re in too.
If one is hell-bent on doing the melodic barlines as in the example, I’d at least add dashed barlines to the left hand.
Yes, at the 11AM mass, the Schola (of which I am one of the five) sing the entire mass (ordinary, propers, communion motet) unaccompanied, but there has been a request from the clergy for it to be accompanied at a different mass where the congregation will have to sing it.
The organist is highly experienced in Gregorian chant; he studied with Mary Berry (conductor) - Wikipedia at Cambridge. As such, he is familiar with this unusual format. But he is also no longer a young man, and is not comfortable attempting to transpose these arrangements at sight, hence the request to rework them.
Please don’t call him Dom. He was Dom(inus) André Mocquereau (1849-1930) one of the editors of the Paleographie Musicale alongside Dom Joseph Pothier, and an eminent musicologist.
He was particularly noted for his theories of free rhythm in chant, rather than isochronism (see Dom Mocquereau’s Theories of Rhythm and Romantic Musical Aesthetics, Walden, Études Grégoriennes, vol 23, 2015)
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I know who he is. I am a professional, full-time Catholic choir master/organist.
I was just typing on a phone and we knew who we were talking about.
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The “1.” Next to the opening bar, Indicates the piece is in Mode 1, the Dorian Mode. The only accidental allowed in the piece is on the 7th step. Making “ti” or “ta”.
The piece can start on any note of the chromatic scale. It is adjusted to fit the group singing it.
Tom
I think amateur organists have difficulty playing in E-flat minor anyway, so I doubt whether the key signature would be of very much help to them… 
Hi @Craig_F
Not with the piece this question was about, but I tried the suggestion you made for independent time signatures; worked exactly as you said it would. When I tried entering independent barline changes with the popover and <alt> <enter> the barline change happened in both hands.
Not sure if I’m missing something that stops this from working as you suggested?
An independent Time Sig has to to be active at the point you insert an independent barline change. If this is the case, then I’m not sure what the problem would be without seeing an example project.
Hi @Craig_F
I was trying out some of the suggestions in this thread and put this together.
Independent Time Signatures.dorico (473.5 KB)
There’s a hidden bar because I was trying to show two independent key signatures side; can’t figure out how I’d bracket the second key signature.
From bar 2 (bar one is hidden and I did a bar number change making 2 into 1) there is a 4 over 4 time signature in the top line. From the start of the piece the second line has an open metre time signature, and two half note rests have been hidden.
You can see what’s hidden by looking at the piano part. The full score is visually what I’m trying to achieve.
With this set up, I’m not able to input independent barline changes.
I found this somewhere: different clef & key depending on choice of instrument, probably for either oboe/flute or oboe d’amore. Unfortunately I don’t know the source anymore, but it’s French baroque. Note that flats and sharps were also used for cancelling each other (instead of naturals), so that the notation of accidentals was correct either way.
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