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Lyrics are entered in a special input mode. This mode is introduced
by the keyword \lyricmode
, or by using \addlyrics
or
\lyricsto
. In this mode you can enter lyrics,
with punctuation and accents, and the input d
is not parsed as
a pitch, but rather as a one letter syllable. Syllables are entered
like notes, but with pitches replaced by text. For example,
\lyricmode { Twin-4 kle4 twin- kle litt- le star2 }
There is a difference between \addlyrics
and
\lyricmode
. \addlyrics
and \lyricsto
ignore all durations and aligns syllables to notes; \lyricmode
uses the durations specified.
A word lyrics mode begins with an alphabetic character, and ends with
any space or digit. The following characters can be any character
that is not a digit or white space. One important consequence of this
is that a word can end with }
. The following example is
usually a mistake in the input file. The syllable includes a }
, so the
opening brace is not balanced
\lyricmode { twinkle}
Similarly, a period which follows an alphabetic sequence is included in the resulting string. As a consequence, spaces must be inserted around property commands
\override Score . LyricText #'font-shape = #'italic
Any _
character that appears in an unquoted word is converted
to a space. This provides a mechanism for introducing spaces into words
without using quotes. Quoted words can also be used in Lyrics mode to
specify words that cannot be written with the above rules. The
following example incorporates double quotes
\lyricmode { He said: "\"Let" my peo ple "go\"" }
This example is slightly academic, since it gives better looking
results using single quotes, ``
and ''
\lyricmode { He said: ``Let my peo ple go'' }
The full definition of a word start in Lyrics mode is somewhat more complex.
A word in Lyrics mode begins with: an alphabetic character, _
,
?
, !
, :
, '
, the control characters ^A
through ^F
, ^Q
through ^W
, ^Y
, ^^
,
any 8-bit character with ASCII code over 127, or a two-character
combination of a backslash followed by one of `
, '
,
"
, or ^
.
Program reference: LyricText.
The definition of lyrics mode is too complex.
This page is for LilyPond-2.6.3 (stable-branch).