On Thu, 2025-01-30 at 15:58 +0000, bobr...@centrum.is wrote: > Greetings from Iceland, > > A friend of mine here has been working on publishing the > Þorlákstíðir* for some years now. He has rendered the chant notation > using the Meinrad font within LibreOffice Writer. He would like to > add a page of Gregorian notation with a parallel rendering in modern > notation. I suggested the possibility of using LilyPond to do both. > He then pointed out that the practice with text underlay in chant > notation was to have the vowel rather than simply the initial letter > of the syllable -- when a consonant -- beneath the first neume of the > melisma. I have looked at a few images of chant notation and this > appear to be the case. > > In looking at Gregorian examples in the LilyPond documentation it > seems that the first letter of the syllable is set beneath the first > neume. Is there a way to change this? Is there a way to make > LilyPond do this by default? Is this a job for Spontini? > > Thanks, > > David > > * [From Wikipedia, translated by Google Translate as the article is > only in Icelandic]: > > The Þorlákstíðir are ancient liturgical prayers that were sung in > Skálholt on the feast days of Saint Þorlákur until the Reformation. > The texts are largely preserved, and they are in Latin. The musical > score can also be read.
There was a discussion of this a long time ago - see the thread starting at https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2010-02/msg00444.html This would be a significant improvement to Lilypond's handling of Gregorian chant notation. If you can't get this technique to work with a modern Lilypond version, there is always the option of setting the chant using Gregorio ( https://gregorio-project.github.io/ ) and combining the results with something like LyLuatex ( https://github.com/jperon/lyluatex ) HTH -- Graham.
