Common Headings in Large Pieces

[Cameron Horsburgh]

Hi folks,

Thanks to the authors for a great piece of software! I'm actually able
to hold my head up when I take my arrangements to band...!

There is one thing that I would love to be able to do. The band I
arrange for has around 15 different parts. I have two separate files for
each instrument, for example trombone.ly (which is a top level file) and
trombone.notes (which holds the \notes block). I also have a score.ly
file which calls all the separate \notes blocks to produce a score. (The
ability to do this is very nice and far more intuitive than anything
else I've used.)

This works very well, but I get frustrated managing the \header block in
each .ly file. I can produce the \header block with simple cutting and
pasting, but any subsequent changes are annoying, especially if they're
only experimental.

I tried to get around this by creating another file called
'commonheadings.' This consisted of a definition:

commonheader = 
title = "Mary Had a Little Lamb"
composer = "Who knows?"

and so on. I called the file in an \include statement and then tried

\header {
commonheader
instrument = "trombone"
}

but I got the error 

syntax error, unexpected '=':
        title
              = "Mary Had a Little Lamb"


I also tried defining the commonheader block as a header block, but this
wasn't allowed either.

Is there any way to achieve this? FYI, I'm using the current Debian
version of 2.0.1.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Cameron