In an orchestral score, instrument names are printed left side of the staves.
This can be achieved by setting
Staff.instrument
and
Staff.instr. This will print a string before
the start of the staff. For the first start, instrument is
used, for the next ones instr is used.
\set Staff.instrument = "Ploink "
\set Staff.instr = "Plk "
c1
\break
c''
You can also use markup texts to construct more complicated instrument names, for example
\set Staff.instrument = \markup {
\column < "Clarinetti"
{ "in B" \smaller \flat } > }
c''1
For longer instrument names, it may be useful to increase the
indent setting in the \layout block.
Program reference: InstrumentName.
When you put a name on a grand staff or piano staff the width of the brace is not taken into account. You must add extra spaces to the end of the name to avoid a collision.
This page is for LilyPond-2.4.5 (stable-branch).