Mark D. Lew wrote: [snip]
[snip]In piano-vocal scores for opera or musical theater, it is common style to let the characters share a staff during passages where two or more characters alternate short lines. As an extreme example, consider the first scene in _The Music Man_, with the salesmen on the train. That piece would be bloated out of control if each voice were kept on a separate staff.
This example is a great one to keep in mind for another reason -- keeping all the voices on a single staff and extracting that single staff as is gives all the singers a great set of ready-made cues, and such an interwoven pattersong as the opening of Music Man would be impossible to learn if singers couldn't see the entire conversation that occurs and keep the whole thing straight in their minds. It would take many more hours of rehearsal for them to work out the intricacies which are readily apparent if all their parts are on a single staff.
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David H. Bailey
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