>> > If you have two staves, and a voice were to change staves, would
>> > you expect the lyrics to leap about too?
>>
>> Actually yes :-) Can you imagine a situation where this shouldn't
>> happen?
>
> You're asking me to imagine something that doesn't make sense to me,
> then to argue that this non-sensible situation shouldn't
> happen. Hmm.
:-)
Imagine a choir piece with three women voices, to be notated on two
staves to save vertical space. To increase readability in the score
it might make sense to position voices 1 and 2 in the upper staff and
voice 3 into the lower one. Suddenly the musical structure changes,
and it is better to have voice 1 alone in the upper staff and voices 2
and 3 in the lower one. The lyrics of voice 2 should positioned below
staff 1 for the former and above staff 2 for the latter situation.
Another example is the strange beast of opera score reductions for
piano solo, as done in the 19th century: there are no separate staves
for the singers; instead, the lyrics are directly embedded into the
piano staves and jump around between the staves as needed (I couldn't
quickly find a scan in the internet, sorry).
To summarize: there are indeed cases where the lyrics should jump
together with the voice from one staff to another. However, I don't
say that it makes sense to actually support that in LilyPond – it can
be worked around rather easily, and the described situations are very
rare.
Werner
