On Oct 16, 2006, at 12:24 AM, Mark D Lew wrote:
I think I've cited this sample before, but a page on Recordare's
site <http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/recordare/
SullPina02Sample.pdf> shows a good example of the tug-of-war
between lyrics and music. It's a recitative from a Gilbert &
Sullivan song. Because of the layout, stretching the recit to a
third system is impractical, so by necessity it is somewhat tight
but not impossibly tight. In the sample, the music and the lyrics
are each slightly distorted from their ideal, but each is close
enough to be comfortable. Looking at the page it seems
unremarkable, and you might never guess how much tweaking was
necessary to get to that point. But try setting the same passage
from scratch and you'll see.
The sample pages at the Recordare store offer several interesting
studies in lyric spacing. They're not all perfect, and some are
better than others, but they're all quite good. (Full disclosure:
most, but not all, of Recordare's offerings are my work, including
the G&S cited here.)
And very pretty it is, too! I would have said the recit. was nice and
tight, without being crowded.
I notice you don't mind eliminating hyphens—that seems to be the
right decision here, though I always hem and haw when I have to do
it. It certainly cleans things up nicely, especially when you have
long syllables on eighths, like "safeguards" "welcome" and
"afford" (with a sixteenth.) I also noticed that measure 5 is a
little wider than it absolutely has to be, but the balance is quite
nice as a result. I imagine "You've" was the deciding syllable there.
That whole passage would have given me conniptions, and I would
probably have spread the recit over three systems in a totally
unbalanced way because I couldn't deal with the spacing properly. I
have a lot to learn.
Christopher
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