7.3.2 Entering lyrics

Lyrics are entered in a special input mode. This mode is introduced by the keyword \lyricmode, or by using \addlyrics or \lyricsto. In this mode you can enter lyrics, with punctuation and accents, and the input d is not parsed as a pitch, but rather as a one letter syllable. Syllables are entered like notes, but with pitches replaced by text. For example,

\lyricmode { Twin-4 kle4 twin- kle litt- le star2 }

There is a difference between \addlyrics and \lyricmode. \addlyrics and \lyricsto ignore all durations and aligns syllables to notes; \lyricmode uses the durations specified.

A word lyrics mode begins with an alphabetic character, and ends with any space or digit. The following characters can be any character that is not a digit or white space. One important consequence of this is that a word can end with }. The following example is usually a mistake in the input file. The syllable includes a }, so the opening brace is not balanced

\lyricmode { twinkle}

Similarly, a period which follows an alphabetic sequence is included in the resulting string. As a consequence, spaces must be inserted around property commands

\override Score . LyricText #'font-shape = #'italic

Any _ character that appears in an unquoted word is converted to a space. This provides a mechanism for introducing spaces into words without using quotes.

To enter lyrics with characters from non-English languages, or with non-ascii characters (such as the heart symbol or slanted quotes), simply insert the characters directly into the input file and save it with utf-8 encoding. See Text encoding for more info.

\lyricmode { He said: “Let my peo ple go”. }

The full definition of a word start in Lyrics mode is somewhat more complex.

A word in Lyrics mode begins with: an alphabetic character, _, ?, !, :, ', the control characters ^A through ^F, ^Q through ^W, ^Y, ^^, any 8-bit character with ASCII code over 127, or a two-character combination of a backslash followed by one of `, ', ", or ^.

See also

Program reference: LyricText.

Bugs

The definition of lyrics mode is too complex.

Other languages: English.
Using automatic language selection.