307: Choral music - creating versicles and responses with Sibelius

Versicles and responses use a particular kind of layout that combines several advanced features of Sibelius, such as irregular bars, split systems, non-breaking spaces, and so on.

The techniques you'll need to master are:

Non-breaking spaces

To put multiple words under one syllable as sung in the versicles, use Option-space (Mac) or Ctrl+space (Windows). You'll need to drag e.g. the terminal notes of the versicle rightwards in order to position the long text correctly. An alternative in Sibelius 2 and above is to actually write the note values required for each note of the versicle in e.g. voice 2 and attach the lyrics to those notes, then hide those notes and insert e.g. a voice 1 breve to look right.

See Lyrics in your User Guide for more on non-breaking spaces.

Irregular bars

Usually you'll need irregular bars for the versicles, so use Create > Bar > Other to do this.

See Bars and bar rests in your User Guide for more details.

Staff type changes

Usually the versicles are notated on the tenor or bass staff, depending on the pitch and/or clef required. You can hide the other staves (e.g. S, A, and B) using an Instrument Change (Sibelius 5 and later) or a Staff Type Change (Sibelius 4 and earlier):

Sibelius 5 and above: select bar(s) that you want to hide, then go to Create > Other > Instrument Change > All Instruments/Others/No instrument (hidden), making sure to deselect Announce at last note of previous instrument. Adjust the positioning as necessary, and use Edit > Hide or Show > Hide to hide any superfluous instrument names.

NB. If the bar you wish to hide is at the start of a system, it will be necessary to create the instrument change at the end of the previous system, otherwise, the bracket, key signature and time signature will remain visible.

See Instruments in your User Guide for more details on instrument changes.

Sibelius 4 and below: use Create > Staff Type Change > Pitched > No lines (hidden) then use Create > Staff Type Change > Pitched > 5 lines to make them reappear where the response begins.

See Staves in your User Guide for more details on staff type changes.

Split systems

Usually the versicle and response are separated by a gap, with a new initial barline and restatement of the clef after the gap. To make this gap, select the barline after which the gap should occur and choose Layout > Break > Split System (or Layout > Divide System in Sibelius 1.x). You can then choose which elements (clefs, brackets, etc.) appear after the gap in the Bars panel of the Properties window (select the barline at the end of the bar after the gap and type Command-I (Mac) or Alt+Enter (Windows) in Sibelius 1.x).

Once you are comfortable with the above techniques, it's easy to put together quite complex choral layouts very quickly.