Node: Engraving in LilyPond, Next: Typography and program architecture, Previous: Notation in LilyPond, Up: Introduction
The term music engraving derives from the traditional process of music printing. Only a few decades ago, sheet music was made by cutting and stamping the music into zinc or pewter plates, in mirror image. The plate would be inked, and the depressions caused by the cutting and stamping would hold ink. An image was formed by pressing paper to the plate. The stamping and cutting was completely done by hand. Making corrections was cumbersome, so engraving had to be done correctly in one go. Of course, this was a highly specialized skill, much more so than the traditional process of printing books. In the traditional German system of craftsmanship six years of full-time training, more than any other craft, were required before a student could call himself a master of the art. After that many more years of practical experience were needed to become an established music engraver. Even today, with the use of high-speed computers and advanced software, music requires lots of manual fine tuning before it is acceptable for publication.
Sheet music is performance material: everything is done to aid the musician in letting him perform better. Music often is far away from its reader--it might be on a music stand. To make it clearly readable, traditionally printed sheet music always uses bold symbols, on heavy staff lines, and is printed on large sheets of paper. This "strong" look is also present in the horizontal spacing. To minimize the number of page breaks, (hand-engraved) sheet music is spaced very tightly. Yet, by a careful distribution of white space, the feeling of balance is retained, and a clutter of symbols is avoided.
We have used these observations in designing LilyPond. The images below show the flat symbol. On the left, a scan from a Henle edition, which was made by a computer, and in the center is the flat from a hand engraved Bärenreiter edition of the same music. The left scan illustrates typical flaws of computer print: the symbol is much lighter, the staff lines are thinner, and the glyph has a straight layout with sharp corners. By contrast, the Bärenreiter has a bold and almost voluptuous rounded look. Our flat symbol is designed after, among others, this one. It is tuned it to harmonize with the thickness of our staff lines, which are also much thicker than Henle's lines.
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Henle (2000) | Bärenreiter (1950) |
LilyPond Feta font (2003)
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In spacing, the distribution of space should reflect the durations between notes. However, adhering with mathematical precision to the duration will lead to a poor result. Shown here is an example of a motive, printed twice. It is printed using exact mathematical spacing, and with some corrections. Can you spot which fragment is which?
The fragment only uses quarter notes: notes that are played in a constant rhythm. The spacing should reflect that. Unfortunately, the eye deceives us a little: not only does it notice the distance between note heads, it also takes into account the distance between consecutive stems. As a result, the notes of an up-stem/down-stem combination should be put farther apart, and the notes of a down-up combination should be put closer together, all depending on the combined vertical positions of the notes. The first two measures are printed with this correction, the last two measures without. The notes in the last two measures form down-stem/up-stems clumps of notes.
This page is for LilyPond-2.0.1 (stable-branch).