Roman numerals in Horn numbering

It must be either Christmas or my Birthday, or perhaps both, as the two features I have most been wanting have both arrived on the same day: namely Condensed Scores, and TAB.

I do have a question. Have searched the Version History and the Forum and don’t find this. (May have been reading too fast in my excitement.)

Q: In many older scores, and I prefer to do this even in my own compositions, all wind instruments, except Horns, are numbered with Arabic numerals, such as Flute 1 and 2, but Horns are numbered using Roman numerals, as in Horn I and Horn II. Can this mixture of font styles be accomplished in the new Condensed Score layout process?

And sorry if this has already been answered elsewhere.

–Len

I don’t think this is possible. I’m happy to be told I’m wrong, though :wink:

You can set the number style for section players and solo players to Arabic or Roman independently, but you can’t have different solo players with different style numbers.

And if you make your horns section players to get Roman numbers, you can’t condense them.

I’m going to go a bit off-topic, but my question relates to the statement above. If I have a section of 1st Flutes and a section of 2nd Flutes in a concert band score, they are not condensable into a single Flute 1,2 stave unless each is converted into a solo player?

Just want to get straight on this.

That’s correct. Sections players cannot condense.

That’s correct. The idea of a “solo player” is that the people only play a monophonic line of music. I’m not a wind band expert but my understanding is that if you have say 20 or more clarinets in the actual band, they are divided by the composer/arranger into “solo, 1, 2, 3, 4” or whatever and that division is then fixed for the piece - you would never subdivide the second clarinets into several sub-parts. That is completely different from how an orchestral string section works in modern music.

For what it’s worth, we anticipate lifting the restrictions on section players so that they can participate in condensing, but only once we have been able to address the gnarly issues of what happens with divisi passages when you condense them. So if you can wait to get your concert band scores condensed, this will become possible without any faffing about once we have tackled condensing of section players more generally.

Thanks Daniel. This should solve my cello+double bass issue :wink:

Here’s the question I thought might be found here:
Is there an elegant way to get the Horns to number I & III and then II & IV?

I, III
Horn in F
II, IV

Not if you want to use condensing, no.

Like this?

In Setup, drag Horn 3 above Horn 2. Edit all horn names to be just the Roman numeral. In Layout/Players/Condensing set up custom condensing groups for I and III, and II and IV. Unfortunately by changing the name to just a Roman number you lose the staff group label so you’ll have to add it with Shift-X text using the Staff Labels style and manually position it on every page. If you aren’t Condensing and the distance between the staves of III and II are consistent, you can add the label in the III staff name, but this is unlikely to work as the staff distance will almost certainly vary.

I don’t consider that elegant, but it will work, of course!

I prefer to center-align those roman numerals for horn numbering. Also I am serious to the importance of their font size in this context.