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Sometimes, particularly in Medieval music, several notes are to be sung on one single syllable; such vocalises are called melismas, or melismata.
You can define melismata entirely in the lyrics, by entering _
for every extra note that has to be added to the melisma.
Additionaly, you can make an extender line to be typeset to indicate the melisma in the score, writing a double underscore next to the first syllable of the melisma. This example shows the three elements that are used for this purpose (all of them surrounded by spaces): double hyphens to separate syllables in a word, underscores to add notes to a melisma, and a double underscore to put an extender line.
{ \set melismaBusyProperties = #'() c d( e) f f( e) e e } \addlyrics { Ky -- _ _ ri __ _ _ _ e }
In this case, you can also have ties and slurs in the melody if you
set melismaBusyProperties
, as is done in the example above.
However, the \lyricsto
command can also
detect melismata automatically: it only puts one
syllable under a tied or slurred group of notes. If you want to force
an unslurred group of notes to be a melisma, insert \melisma
after the first note of the group, and \melismaEnd
after the
last one, e.g.,
<< \new Voice = "lala" { \time 3/4 f4 g8 \melisma f e f \melismaEnd e2 } \new Lyrics \lyricsto "lala" { la di __ daah } >>
In addition, notes are considered a melisma if they are manually beamed, and automatic beaming (see Setting automatic beam behavior) is switched off.
A complete example of a SATB score setup is in section Vocal ensembles.
Melismata are not detected automatically, and extender lines must be inserted by hand.