[smufl-discuss] Lower hyphens for lyrics in vocal parts

[Peter Trubinov]

Hello,

My todays suggestion is related to the lyrics in the vocal parts.
There is a tradition to place the hyphen between the syllables not on
its standard place at the middle line but on the baseline of the
letters. This practice is not followed everywhere but many publishers
still use it. Here there are couple of examples:

Ludwig van Beethoven. Messe C-Dur, op. 86. Edition Breitkopf.
http://notovodstvo.ru/smufl/lyrics/beethoven.pdf

Luidgi Cherubini. Requiem No.2 D-moll. Edition Peters.
http://notovodstvo.ru/smufl/lyrics/cherubini.pdf

Today most of the publishers who follow this tradition are using my
modification of Times New Roman font (TimesFL) where the standard
Minus-Hyphen symbol is moved down to the baseline. However that
solution brings some difficulties because sometimes in the lyrics we
need to reproduce the hyphen on its normal position at the middle line
as well. That's required for the compound words, like in the following
example:

Georgy Sviridov. Songs on English Poets. Sviridov Foundation.
http://notovodstvo.ru/smufl/lyrics/sviridov.pdf

So we definitely need a separate slot in the character set for the
lower hyphen. Moreover we need it on two different codes with the
identical graphem, because in some scoring applications we need to do
tricks with hyphenation by displaying hyphen character without
splitting the syllables. That's similar to having normal hyphen
(U+2010) and non-breaking hyphen (U+2011).

The suggestion finally is to introduce two symbols: "lowHyphen" and
"lowNonBreakingHyphen" (or whatever names you find appropriate for
them). Actually I don't know which group would be suitable for these
symbols. Could it be "Vocal techniques"?

All the best,
Peter

--
Dr. Peter Trubinov
 tel. worldwide: [phone]
 when in Russia: [phone]

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