Marking parts tacet in sections of a score

• Jun 30, 2023 - 06:20

Hi,

I have a multimovement work including a bunch of orchestral instruments that was originally in separate files for each movement. I'm combining the full orchestral score into a single file with the movements separated by section breaks, with a new title text frame for each movement, so that the auto-generated parts will have all the movements in them. Overall this works great, but one problem is that when an instrument is tacet in a movement, the part still shows a bunch of empty measures for that movement. What I want is just to hide the staves in that movement, in that part, and replace them with a text box saying "TACET". Is there a reasonably easy way to do that?


Comments

Turn on multi-measure rests:
Format > Style... > Rests > Multi-measure Rest [enable]
or hide empty staves altogether:
Format > Style... > Score > Hide empty staves within systems [enable]

[EDIT]
Another way is to accept the parts as generated with empty systems, then to split the PDF file in order to discard / remove the unwanted material and to add the Tacet remark. I use free software for this purpose:
- PDFsam Basic to split and merge PDF files: https://pdfsam.org/download-pdfsam-basic/
- GIMP graphics editor to change layout and add text: https://www.gimp.org/downloads/

In reply to by DanielR

I think the issue they're having is that they don't want a multi-measure rest to show for that instrument. I've been wondering the same thing.
For example, I have a piece where the trumpet doesn't play at all in the 2nd movement, and the trumpet part for that movement currently looks like this:
Trumpet part 2nd movement.png
But what I want is for it to just say:

II
tacet

III

followed by whatever the trumpet plays in the 3rd movement. Removing the page break from the part but not the score shouldn't be an issue, but those multi-measure rests really aren't necessary for an instrument that won't be playing at all.

Here's the first page of the percussion part from Tchaikovsky's 6th symphony, where the percussion doesn't play until the third movment:
Tchaikovsky 6 percussion - 3rd movement.png
So something like that.

I had the same issue and since there seems to be no new answer to the problem, this is what I did (for anyone else who is looking for a way to solve this).
I selected everything in the stave, not just the notes, but also the barlines, key signature etc. so there are only the empty lines and the title left. Then I put the text saying "TACET" right across the stave. This is what it looks like in Musescore and in the PDF.

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