On Jan 19, 2013, at 4:50 AM, dc wrote: > I'm afraid this question has already been asked, possibly by me! > > How many verses can decently be put under the same music without it > becoming very hard to read? I'd say three or four at the most, but I'm > no singer, so I'm not sure even four is not too many.
Personally, I think of three as a maximum. Unless I have a specific space constraint, I'll split four verses into two and two. As others have noted, different styles/traditions of music have different tolerances. Multiple verses are more common in church hymnbooks, for instance. The most important consideration, in my opinion, is not the music style per se but the intended usage. If the music is going to be sung by a chorus reading from the book in performance, then I would never go above three. That's a case where your typographic choice WILL contribute to an inferior performance. It may be somewhat counterintuitive, but I am more inclined to split verses the more professional the singers are. Amateur singers are more likely to memorize (ie, memorize the music and follow the lyrics with their eyes), so the extra distance is more tolerable. Professionals are more likely to be sight-reading with little or no rehearsal, and therefore they are more likely to be bothered by multiple lyric lines, not less. If the piece is a solo song rather than a chorus, particularly in a staged work, then again it's more likely to memorized rather than sung from the page, so that would make multiple verse lines more tolerable. mdl _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
