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Chapter 3: Fundamental concepts 72<br />
3.4.2 Four-part SATB vocal score<br />
Most vocal scores of music written for four-part mixed choir with orchestral accompaniment such<br />
as Mendelssohn’s Elijah or Handel’s Messiah have the choral music and words on four staves,<br />
one for each of SATB, with a piano reduction of the orchestral accompaniment underneath.<br />
Here’s an example from Handel’s Messiah:<br />
Soprano<br />
Alto<br />
Tenor<br />
Bass�<br />
Piano �<br />
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Worthy<br />
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is the lamb that was slain<br />
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is<br />
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the lamb that was slain<br />
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is the lamb that was slain<br />
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is the lamb that was slain<br />
None of the templates provides this layout exactly. The nearest is ‘SATB vocal score and<br />
automatic piano reduction’ – see Section A.4 [Vocal ensembles], page 152 – but we need to<br />
change the layout and add a piano accompaniment which is not derived automatically from the<br />
vocal parts. The variables holding the music and words for the vocal parts are fine, but we shall<br />
need to add variables for the piano reduction.<br />
The order in which the contexts appear in the ChoirStaff of the template do not correspond<br />
with the order in the vocal score shown above. We need to rearrange them so there are four<br />
staves with the words written directly underneath the notes for each part. All the voices should<br />
be \voiceOne, which is the default, so the \voiceXXX commands should be removed. We also<br />
need to specify the tenor clef for the tenors. The way in which lyrics are specified in the template<br />
has not yet been encountered so we need to use the method with which we are familiar. We<br />
should also add the names of each staff.<br />
Doing this gives for our ChoirStaff:<br />
\new ChoirStaff <br />
\new Lyrics \lyricsto "sopranos" { \sopranoWords }<br />
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