SDTalley3,

Do you mean "Stella Caeli Extirpavit" or is there a completely separate text?

As to your original question, I'm sorry that I'm not much help, since I use Finale, and don't have any of the add-ons which would let me write using neumes.

What do you mean -- in case it's not obvious to others, too -- by "layer the voices, or write the voices so that they correspond to each other"?

@Chris Garton-Zavesky

yes thank you I did not see the typo. I either want to write a single staff with the central melody and also write in the other voices above and below, or alternatively write each voice in its own staff like a usual 3 voice piece. This is possible with Finale, but I'm dealing with a schola director who is brilliant at reading chant notation, but not so in western notation.

Use MuseScore. Lilypond is all text driven and a steep learning curve. If you do write Lilypond code, do it in Frescobaldi

If it's straight organum, perhaps three separate scores would be appropriate anyway (though perhaps not strictly necessary). In the renaissance each singer had an individual part (à la instrumental parts of today) although this has since fallen out of fashion. I read an article last year about a choir director who has begun to introduce this type of score for his choir and has had really good results since it forces each person to learn their part more closely since the cues from the other parts are missing. Interesting (if bold) idea.

At any rate, if anyone cracks the code, I'd also like to know about superimposing multiple lines of chant like a modern score. I suppose you could always generate the PDFs and then cut them up and rearrange them in something like AffinityDesigner, but the problem I have with GABC editors is there's no way (that I'm aware of anyway) for force a line break, and thus no way to make sure that the same breaks would occur in each part and properly line up.

If one uses Affinity Designer or InDesign, this would be quite easy. The problem becomes the cost with ID.

@ServiamScores

Can you point us to an example of the 'old style' of polyphony to which you are referring?

@chonak

I was able to accomplish this with the latest from Finale, but I wasn't willing to pay c $200.00 for a trade-up in programs after the 30 day grace period...Now I'm finding this a little more necessary especially when it comes to free rhythm pieces.

@ServiamScores

I was thinking about doing the good ol' cut-and-paste with the pdf's.

@chonak: I would just use the cadenza feature.

Well, it looks like I'll have to get familiar with using lilypond.

@m_r_taylor, I hope and pray for this. Daniel is heavily involved (or was anyway) in Anglican music circles and even typeset a chant hymnal years ago using the old Meinrad font, so this is something clearly dear to him personally. Let’s hope it’s sooner than later. I’ve tried to argue on the Dorico forum that chant is experiencing a heavy revival and many church musicians would eagerly turn to a new tool developed by them.

Here’s an article about Morales and each part had its own book.

https://moralesmassbook.bc.edu/morales-bio/

Not interested to use mensural, just wanted to refresh my memory again on what it was... i think i studied it in the Grout History book in the 70's.

You can hide time signatures in Finale if you click on the Staff tool and double click on the staff you want to change.

@ Felicia

I think I tried that for the version I have, but it is not sophisticated as most updated versions. I'll have to look at that again, and I hope that I am wrong.