LilyPond — Changes ¶

Major changes in LilyPond ¶

• Book and bookpart expressions now have different and separate types that can be tested using ly:book? and ly:bookpart?. A predicate testing for either (like ly:book? did before) is available as ly:book-or-bookpart?.

  Book and bookpart identifiers as well as calls to syntactic scheme functions defined using define-scheme-function and returning book or bookpart expressions can now be directly used instead of book or bookpart blocks.

• \book and \bookpart blocks now contain their own local scopes for variables. This scope is active across the block and contains all variables defined within the block. As one consequence, assignments to variables are now permitted within \book and \bookpart blocks, making it easier to restructure standalone LilyPond files by wrapping them into books or bookparts. Outside of the containing block, the variables are not visible. The public interface of the module containing a book or bookpart’s variables can be accessed programmatically using the new Scheme function ly:book-scope; accessors ly:book-lookup and ly:book-set-variable! are also provided.
• Books and bookparts may now contain output definition blocks \layout and/or \midi in addition to \paper (which was always possible). Those take their initial settings from the current active scope. If a bookpart has its own \layout block, that provides a default for typesetting all scores it includes that don’t have an output definition of their own. The same holds for a book. Since a score produces only MIDI when it explicitly includes a \midi block, there is no similar default behavior for MIDI at processing time.

New for musical notation ¶

New for specialist notation ¶

• The chord name input x:1/x gets now rendered as ‘N.C./x’.

  \chords { d:1/d }
  

  

• White mensural ligatures now support final ascending longae facing backwards, obey tweaks in more cases, and handle errors more gracefully.

  \score {
    \new PetrucciStaff {
      \clef "petrucci-c4"
      \[ g\breve f \tweak ligature-pes ##t c'\longa \]
    }
  }
  

  

• Stanza numbers in lyrics are now created with a dedicated \stanza ... command. This replaces the former syntax \set stanza = ....

  \relative {
    c'4 c g' g
    a a g2
  }
  \addlyrics {
    \stanza "1."
    Twin -- kle, twin -- kle, lit -- tle star
  }
  \addlyrics {
    \stanza "2."
    When the bla -- zing sun is gone
  }
  

  

• Stanza numbers in lyrics can now be auto-repeated at the beginning of each line. To activate this feature, set the stanzaReminders property to #t:

  \new Voice \relative {
    \key e \minor
    b'4 b a g
    fis2 e \break
    b'4 cis d b
    e2 dis \break
    e4 g fis fis
    e1
  }
  \addlyrics {
    \stanza "1."
    \set stanzaReminders = ##t
    Je -- su, mei -- ne Freu -- de,
    mei -- nes Her -- zens Wei -- de,
    \set stanzaReminderText = "(1st)"
    Je -- su, mei -- ne Zier.
  }
  \addlyrics {
    \stanza "2."
    Un -- ter dei -- nem Schir -- men
    bin ich vor den Stür -- men
    \set stanzaReminders = ##t
    \set stanzaReminderText = #make-tiny-markup
    al -- ler Fein -- de frei.
  }
  

  

• An alternative to using \pes and \flexa (which internally do the same) is the command \~. This isn’t new (being introduced in 2003); however, it stayed undocumented and was broken for some time.

  \new VaticanaScore {
    \new VaticanaVoice \relative {
      \[ a \pes b \flexa g \]
    }
  }
  

  

  \new VaticanaScore {
    \new VaticanaVoice \relative {
      \[ a \~ b \~ g \]
    }
  }
  

  

Miscellaneous improvements ¶

• Producing SVG output with the legacy -dbackend=svg backend is now much faster for large scores, due to caching extracted glyphs from the SVG font file.
• The new \verboseBarNumbers command simplifies documentation examples where bar numbers are a central concern. It might also be useful for debugging.
• The new commands \startGradualTempoChange and \stopGradualTempoChange describe a temporary departure from the prevailing tempo. Currently, these affect only MIDI output.
• These functions, which have been deprecated since version 2.13.19, have been removed: \deprecatedcresc, \deprecatedendcresc, \deprecateddim, and \deprecatedenddim.
• The glyph-name property of a NoteHead grob now contains a fully qualified glyph name, as documented. It is no longer necessary to replace the stencil just to draw a different note head glyph; setting this property suffices.

  {
    c'4
    \once\override NoteHead.glyph-name = "noteheads.s2triangle"
    c'4
  }
  

  

  As a side effect, the Scheme function note-head::calc-glyph-name is not needed anymore and will be removed after a deprecation cycle. Depending on the intended use case, its use may be replaced either by accessing the glyph-name property of a specific NoteHead grob, or by calling select-head-glyph for a specific notehead style and duration-log.

For older news, go to https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.26/Documentation/changes/, or go back to the Documentation index.