Thank you very much Matthew for your kind and thorough answer!
I researched the issue a bit before posting and understand that the warning
is appropriate in my situation.
I was wondering if it's possible to inform Lilypond that I'm aware of it
and would like to suppress the message. Is that possible?
Grazie Matthew!!!
g.
On Sat, 1 Mar 2025 at 14:39, <msk...@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca> wrote:
> On Sat, 1 Mar 2025, Gianmaria Lari wrote:
>
> > this code compiles with this message: warning: articulation failed to
> steal
> > 9/320 note backward at beginning of music; stealing forward instead. If I
> > understood correctly it's an old bug. But I don't know how to solve it.
>
> Historical performance practice varied, but it is and was very common for
> an acciacatura to be interpreted as taking time from the previous note -
> which is impossible when it happens at the very start of the score, as in
> your example:
>
> > \score
> > {
> > \articulate {\new Staff { \new Voice { \voiceOne \acciaccatura a8 b4}
> }}
> > \midi {}
> > }
>
> "Steal from previous note" is the behaviour Lilypond+articulate.ly
> applies. I think it may actually be native to Lilypond rather than
> implemented in articulate.ly. Either way, the warning is correctly
> reporting that you've asked for something impossible, and it's making the
> reasonable guess that the time should come from the following note
> instead. I wouldn't regard that as a "bug"; what else could it do that
> would be better?
>
> If you want the acciacatura to play before what would otherwise be the
> start of the piece, you could add an invisible spacer at the start and
> extend the length of the first measure to include it. Using \partial
> would be my first thought but it might create a stray barline; there are
> probably more elegant ways to resolve this.
>
> If you want the acciacatura to steal time from the following note just at
> the start of the score, while stealing from the previous note if there is
> one, then you can leave the code as is and ignore the warning.
>
> If you want acciacature to always steal from the following notes in
> general, then maybe you actually want them to be appogiature instead.
>
> If you want the notation that Lilypond calls "acciacatura" but not the
> behaviour in MIDI output that Lilypond+articulate.ly applies to that
> notation, then you may be stuck with doing what I do: write two versions
> of the music, one for engraving and one for MIDI generation, and use tags
> to separate them. The MIDI version would write out the timing meant to be
> actually played, with ordinary notes, rather than depending on
> the system to translate grace notes into that timing.
>
> --
> Matthew Skala
> msk...@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca People before tribes.
> https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/
