Hymnal at Gregorio
  • fr_estevao_ocist
    Posts: 6
    My first Gregorio project would be an Hymnal. I dont like much the way that hymns are written in gabc, I think it's more clear when each stanza is separate. In order to make something like that, what would be the best option? Can I do it with the \gabcsnippet or it would be better put in separated files and link them? Or is it just impossible to do in Gregorio?
    Thanked by 1Chrism
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,220
    You can keep all the stanzas together in one GABC file. If you would like a line break after each stanza, you can add a (z) or (Z) code after the last syllable of the stanza, depending on whether you want the staff to be shortened or to be at the full line-width.

    This will enable the production of a correct 'custos' at the end of those stanzas.

    Incidentally, many Latin hymns in the Liber Hymnarius, the Antiphonale Monasticum, and other books have been transcribed to GABC notation, and those are available at the Gregobase web site, so those may give you useful files to work with.
    Thanked by 3CHGiffen ServiamScores IanW
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 2,367
    You can also just insert a blank line between verses (but write the number after (::) so that it falls correctly at the end of a line). Blank spaces after the first are ignored when typesetting but allow for ease of reading.

    I recommend against separating stanzas in a file. That requires too many invocations of gregorioscore (probably customized, e.g. I call gscore which has greannotation and a size change to the capital, initialscore to get an illustrated initial, and smallscore to get rid of the initial. All of those include the basic command from the package. gabcsnippet is not the appropriate tool for this.

    If you need to separate the text out while working, you can use the GABC transcriber of Ben Bloomfield, but it may not support the features of later versions of Gregorio when displaying online.
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,220
    May I rephrase one of Matthew's points? The effects he describes happen if you use separate GABC files for the stanzas.
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 2,367
    Yeah. What I should say is that I “recommend against separating stanzas already in a file” such as what’s on Gregobase. (Or separating stanzas which aren’t transcribed already — because the source only has one verse in chant notation, because it’s totally new, or whatever is the case)

    So I would say that you do not want to have stanza_1.gabc and so on, just
    hymn_1.gabc. A six-verse hymn would require gregorioscore six times… hard to read, requires more from LaTeX. Weird things will happen because of the way that Gregorio scores are made, as LaTeX paragraphs which make page breaks and the spacing harder to control.

    Now, you could typeset just one verse, which you probably don’t want. Monastics are usually the only ones who can apply a melody correctly to words alone, although one-stanza-per-hymn saves space on the page. But I would also say that in that case, you should take the complete score from Gregobase, comment out each line with % at the beginning of the line, and save yourself trouble if you change your mind. I would not delete the rest of the verses if they exist already in a gabc file.

    I’m not a computer science, math, or engineering guy. I’ve just used a lot of LaTeX in the last two years. I don’t even tinker much with Gregorio; my tinkering is mostly limited to initials and occasionally bar spacing requirements. The defaults are usually satisfactory enough.
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