Hi all,
Christian Mondrup wrote:
> I'm working on modern editions of some songs by the english early 17'th
> century composer Thomas Ravenscroft typeset with mtx (see
> http://www.gmd.de/Misc/Music/scores/Welcome.html#ravenscroft and
> http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/ravenscroft/modern). As for the lyrics of
> these songs I'm confronted with the problem of the correct way of
> dividing the words into syllables. I have asked some english linguists
> about the english rules of word division and have realized that they -
> strict as they are - may not not be used as guidelines.
>
> On the other hand I imagine that english music typesetters follow some
> rules or standards. Do anybody of you know them or do you know where I
> may read about them ?
I don't know about any source, but I believe that asking linguists is
not the good approach here. In music the syllables should be divided in
the same way as they are to be sung - usually (but not as a rule) with
vowel before hyphen.
Just imagine how you would sing the word you want to hyphenate and
divide it accordingly - this is probably the best rule. It may look ugly
at a times, but will be much easier to sing.
Stanislav Kneifl
