Re: Style for Editorial Rests

Hi everyone1

On Wed, 24 Jun 2026 at 01:37, Gabriel Ellsworth <[email protected]>
wrote:


> There are two possible goals here, and they are in tension for my choir.
>
>
>    1. One goal is “reproduce the 16th-century source material as exactly
>    as possible.”
>    2. The competing goal is “minimise time wasted in rehearsal discussing
>    ‘Has everyone pencilled in the eighth rest that we are taking off the
>    altos’ half note in measure NN?’”
>
> I don’t like the look of changed note values and bracketed rests. I think
it is all too distracting.

Something that might bridge these two (untested) might be:

\after 4. <>^\markup \rest { 8 } c2 % possibly make the rest grey?

Our choir has a rule that you take off half of the conductor’s beat in any
music that precedes the advent of choral full scores. Once people are used
to it, it saves an enormous amount of time.

Cheers,
Vaughan