Lilypond Orchestral score: how to show duplicated tempo marking for violins?

Question

It is customary to add tempo marking (like \tempo "Andante" 4 = 80) on multiple parts in an orchestral score, e.g., this. For example above the first part (say, flutes) and then repeated above the strings. I don't know why this is necessary, but it's pretty common.

When using score I am unable to get Lilypond to display the tempo marking anywhere other than above the first part, i.e., at the top of the score. If I add a tempo marking on the violins at the beginning, i.e., at the same spot as the flutes, it gets elided. If I add it like 1/4 note after the flutes, it shows up at the top of the score.

Why is that and is there a solution or a work around?

I would be happy adding the marking as text if that's my only option but I am not sure how to do that (in particular how I can display a quarter note in text).

Answer 1

To give you some understanding of what is going on:

Lilypond thinks in terms of hierarchical contexts. In these contexts you have so called engravers, which are responsible for creating things in the score. On the top you get a context called Global, which then usually contains a Score context, and in there you have contexts for Staves, Voices, Lyrics, ...

Each of these contexts has it’s own engravers, listening to music events and objects happening under this contexts. And these engravers then create things.

Tempo marks are created by the so called Metronome_mark_engraver. This one reacts to tempo change events and creates a mark.

Now, you can freely remove and add engravers from and to contexts in \layout or \with blocks. So one thing to do would for example be to generally move the Metronome_mark_engraver from Score-level to say StaffGroup-level:

\layout {
  \context {
    \Score
    \remove Metronome_mark_engraver
  }
  \context {
    \StaffGroup
    \consists Metronome_mark_engraver
  }
}

global = {
  \tempo "Andante" s1
}

<<
  \new StaffGroup <<
    \new Staff \with { instrumentName = "Flauti" } { \global }
    \new Staff \with { instrumentName = "Oboi" } { \global }
    \new Staff \with { instrumentName = "Clarinetti" } { \global }
    \new Staff \with { instrumentName = "Fagotti" } { \global }
  >>
  \new StaffGroup <<
    \new Staff \with { instrumentName = "Corni" } { \global }
    \new Staff \with { instrumentName = "Trombe" } { \global }
    \new Staff \with { instrumentName = "Timpani" } { \global }
  >>
>>

It is also possible to have the Metronome mark engraver in multiple contexts (e.g. big for score and small ones for Staff Groups) or even selected contexts (using e.g. \new Staff \with { \consists Metronome_mark_engraver} ...).

You can even ditch the Metronome mark engraver all together and create a custom engraver that formats everything in a completely different way.