**Question in short**: Suppose I have a staff in a variable. Can I impose breaks (line breaks, page breaks, page turns) on that staff without modifying the variable? My use case is using the staff in a part and in a score with other parts, where obviously the breaks need to be different. Another use case could be using the staff on different page sizes.
**My research**: I am assuming for example staffIGot = \new PianoStaff << %{ ... %] >> As some of us know, this does not work: << \staffIGot { s1*5 \break } >> It introduces an extra staff. Not wanted. I can trivially pick the staff apart and put parts ("voices" in Lilypond) into different variables that I can then combine with each other and with my desired breaks. It will be wordy and a bit error-prone (in particular with a piano staff with centred dynamics). You may say that my question is really a "luxury" one: can I avoid having to do this? **My solution until now**: Here’s the best I have thought of: I put the staff in a separate source file (which I would want to do anyway), for example: staffIGot = \new PianoStaff << \new Staff << \imposedBreaks % music goes here >> \new Staff { %{ more music here %} } >> As you can see, my staff now uses a variable \imposedBreaks that it does not define. So when I use the staff, I first define my desired breaks in there: \version "2.24.3" imposedBreaks = { s1*6 | \break } \include "includeFileWithStaff.ly" \new Score \staffIGot This seems to give me my desired behaviour. I find it a bit tricky. A further downside is I also need to define imposedBreaks in scores where I don’t want to control breaks manually (I can define it empty). **Question more precisely**: Is there a better, simpler, less tricky solution? Sent with Proton Mail secure email.