Re: Parallel music, adding a voice, stem not appearing

[Andrew Bernard]

Hi Jospeh,

An erstwhile organist myself, hopefully I can give you an answer.

For me, while parallel music is described in the NR, for pieces of any length I find it too hard to untangle what voice is what. Better in my opinion to use explicit voices outright and be done with it. Then you have at your control all the lilypond machinery for adjusting voices, including offsets and so on. Generally you know when you have to introduce highly specifically coded tweaks for column offsets to get things to work that you are on the wrong track. Lilypond is very good at working out layout issues when you use the standard techniques.

Here is a rewrite of your score, using an absolutely standard multi voice technique for piano, or organ. I put the voices together in the staves they normally live in, but you can separate them all out if you like.

You are correct in saying a temporary voice is needed for the A flat.

One quirk you will find is the matter of the dot on the A flat. You can play around with this as you see fit, but the voicing offsets seem fine to me.

The output compares favourably with the score I found on IMSLP.

I would recommend this style of working rather than the parallel music approach. One can argue that it is simpler to get voicing matters under control. At least, I think so.

You can find the standard template for piano in the MN in Section A 3.1.

Andrew

— snip

\version "2.19.39"

\language "english"

global = {

  \key c \minor

  \time 3/4

}

rh = \relative c'' {

  <<

    {

      % soprano

      \voiceOne

      c2.~ |

      <<

        {

          \stemDown

          \shiftOn

          \once \hide Dots

          af

        }

        \\

        {

          \shiftOn c

        }

      >>

    }

    \new Voice

    {

      % alto

      \voiceTwo

      bf!4 af g~ |

      g4 f ef |

    }

  >>

}

lh = \relative c {

  \clef bass

  <<

    {

      \voiceOne

      % tenor

      \change Staff= "right" \stemDown g''4 \skip 2 |

      \change Staff = "left" \stemUp c,2. |

    }

    \new Voice

    {

      \voiceTwo

      % bass

      \change Staff="right" ef4 \change Staff = "left" c4 bf! |

      r4 af g |

    }

  >>

}

pedal = \relative c {

  \clef bass

  c2.~ |

  c2. |

}

\score {

  \new PianoStaff

  <<

    \new Staff = "right" {

      \global

      \rh

    }

    \new Staff = "left" {

      \global

      \lh

    }

    \new Staff = "pedal" {

      \global

      \pedal

    }

  >>

}

— snip