mpdolce - LilyPond

Chapter 3: Fundamental concepts 76
3.4.3 Building a score from scratch
After gaining some facility with writing LilyPond code, you may find that it is easier to build a
score from scratch rather than modifying one of the templates. You can also develop your own
style this way to suit the sort of music you like. Let’s see how to put together the score for an
organ prelude as an example.
We begin with a header section. Here go the title, name of composer, etc, then come any
variable definitions, and finally the score block. Let’s start with these in outline and fill in the
details later.
We’ll use the first two bars of Bach’s prelude based on Jesu, meine Freude which is written
for two manuals and pedal organ. You can see these two bars of music at the bottom of this
section. The top manual part has two voices, the lower and pedal organ one each. So we need
four music definitions and one to define the time signature and key:
\version "2.12.3"
\header {
title = "Jesu, meine Freude"
composer = "J S Bach"
}
TimeKey = { \time 4/4 \key c \minor }
ManualOneVoiceOneMusic = {s1}
ManualOneVoiceTwoMusic = {s1}
ManualTwoMusic = {s1}
PedalOrganMusic = {s1}
\score {
}
For now we’ve just used a spacer note, s1, instead of the real music. We’ll add that later.
Next let’s see what should go in the score block. We simply mirror the staff structure we
want. Organ music is usually written on three staves, one for each manual and one for the
pedals. The manual staves should be bracketed together, so we need to use a PianoStaff for
them. The first manual part needs two voices and the second manual part just one.
\new PianoStaff % end ManualOne Staff context
\new Staff = "ManualTwo" > % end ManualTwo Staff context
>> % end PianoStaff context
Next we need to add a staff for the pedal organ. This goes underneath the PianoStaff, but
it must be simultaneous with it, so we need angle brackets around the two. Missing these out
would generate an error in the log file. It’s a common mistake which you’ll make sooner or
later! Try copying the final example at the end of this section, remove these angle brackets, and
compile it to see what errors it generates.