Re: Survey: Large scores

[Urs Liska]

Am 16.04.2015 um 20:06 schrieb Kieren MacMillan:
> Hi Urs,
>
> > Basically I'd be interested in an estimate if there are practical limitations 
> > where one would be better off skipping a commission because LilyPond would be 
> > at its limit.
> I have yet to reach that point, and I’ve Lily-pound four stage musicals, a 
> chamber opera, 9-minute works for full orchestra and choir, and so on.

Well, that is somewhat comforting.

> That being said, in most of my long works (i.e., musicals and operas), I am 
> fortunate that I can compartmentalize the engraving work into much smaller 
> sections (e.g., movements or even songs). For example, I have a 
> “MyWork_fullscore_single” file, which I use to get each segment nearly to 
> perfection; only once all the segments are nearly perfect on their own do I 
> attempt to combine them all into the “MyWork_fullscore” file and compile the 
> final score all at once.
>
> My reaction (based mostly on the excruciating amount of time it took to 
> recompile that 9-minute orchestra and choir work) is that I wouldn’t want to 
> engrave even one act of a full-score unsegmented opera with Lilypond, unless I 
> had a *very* good workflow (e.g., make 100-200 tweaks, press “compile”, go for 
> an hour’s jog).

This comes close to what I am experiencing with our "Das trunkne Lied" 
score. This is one single movement of 35 minutes in 800 measures and an 
original (handwritten) edition of 150 pages. Using frenched staves and 
14 point staff size it takes around 100 pages on A3 paper. And (as 
written earlier today) it needs 5-8 minutes to compile that full score.

I can conveniently compile single "cells" from our "grid" within 
seconds. I have also a function available to compile only  a part of the 
score, e.g. measure 100-300 or page 3-5 (of the original edition) or 
rehearsal mark 5-6.
But all these partial compilations will nevertheless interprete the 
whole score before laying out its "cut-out" and the compilation of a 
single page will also take 1-2 minutes therefore.

So far we're only dealing with the content, and I will only recompile 
the full score every few days or even weeks. But once we should get to 
the point of tweaking the score I'm not so sure what I'll feel about it 
then ...

> Hope this helps!

Yes, it does.

Best
Urs

> Kieren.
> _______________________
>
> Kieren MacMillan, composer
> www:  <http://www.kierenmacmillan.info>
> email:  address@hidden