short tunes

[debian]

Traditional tunes tend to be short.  Just a burst of eight bars,
repeated usually and then a burst of another eight bars again
repeated.

I would like to play the tune a number of times 1,2,3 perhaps 4 times.

I could go:

timidity my.tune
timidity my.tune
timidity my.tune

but is no good as there is a delay between tunes.

How can I tell Lilypond to put out the tune (ie the notes) n times,
where n is taken from the command line ?

I would like to have my tunes stand alone, so I can edit them an play
them individually.  But I would also like to "suck" the essential
parts of these same tunes into a book for sharing or perhaps
publications.

I don't mind writing some perl code to do this, but I need to know the
essential parts to suck in.

Thanks a lot.

Joe