Cancan

by Jacques Offenbach

I was browsing through my LilyPond posts and noticed that all the examples I gave so far are in “common time”, i.e. 4/4. This is default time signature in LilyPond, so we had not worry about it — until now. But even now we should not worry much about it.

• To add any other time signature, use \time command, for instance \time 2/4, \time 3/4 and so on.

For the annual Members Concert at Duxford today, Timur played two pieces with Beginner Violins and Beginner Guitars; Yuri played two short pieces with Improver Violins; I played That’ll Never Happen No More by Blind Blake (customised lyrics) with Advanced Guitars; and, as Beginner Trombones, we did that pièce de résistance, Galop Infernal aka Cancan from Orphée aux enfers. (As I am the only remaining trombone student and the other player was my teacher, we also could have been called Advanced Trombones.) I think it went rather well, I managed to hit most of the notes.


Technically, the most difficult part for me was the one which involves rapid jump from sixth to second position and back:


Here are a few more LilyPond commands I used to write my part down:

• To add tempo, use a metronome mark \tempo, e.g. \tempo "Allegro", \tempo 4 = 160, etc.
• To add dynamics, use the dynamic marks such as \p (piano), \mf (mezzo-forte), \f (forte), \ff (fortissimo), \sfz (sforzando) and so forth.
• Crescendo is started with \< and terminated with a dynamic mark, e.g. \ff.
• To indicate a fermata (hold), place \fermata after a note.

The complete LilyPond file:

% ****************************************************************
% Cancan (Jacques Offenbach)
% ****************************************************************
\version "2.12.3"
\header {
 title = "Le Galop Infernal d’Orphée aux Enfers"
 composer = "Jacques Offenbach"
}
\score {
  \new Staff 
 {
  \clef bass
  \key f \major
  \time 2/4
  \tempo "Energico" 
  \repeat volta 2 {
   f2\mf 
   g8-. bes8-. a8-. g8-.
   c'4 c'4
   c'8-. d'8-. a8-. bes8-.
   g4 g4
   g8-. bes8-. a8-. g8-.
   f8-. f'8-. e'8-. d'8-. 
   c'8-. bes8-. a8-. g8-.
   f2
   g8-. bes8-. a8-. g8-.
   c'4 c'4
   c'8-. d'8-. a8-. bes8-.
   g4 g4
   g8-. bes8-. a8-. g8-.
   f8-. c'8-. g8-. a8-.
   }
   \alternative {
   { f8 r8 c4 }
   { f8 r8 f'8\sfz r8 }
   }
   c8-.\p g8-. g8-. a8-.
   g8-. f8-. f8-. a8-.
   bes8-. d'8-. f'8-. d'8-.
   d'8-. c'8-. c'4
   d'8-. e8-. e8-. d'8-.
   c'8-. f8-. f8-. a8-.
   a8( g8) a8( g8)
   a8( g8) a8( g8)
   c8-. g8-. g8-. a8-.
   g8-. f8-. f8-. a8-.
   bes8-. d'8-. f'8-. d'8-.
   d'8-. c'8-. c'4
   d'8-. e8-. e8-. d'8-.
   c'8-. f8-. f8-. a8-.
   a8( g8) a8( g8)
   g8( f8) f8 r8
  \repeat volta 2 { 
   a4->\f f4->
   d4-> c4->
   c'8-.\p g8-. a8-. bes8-.
   a8-. g8-. f8 r8
   a4->\f f4-> 
   d4-> c4->
   b,8\p( c8) d8-. e8-.
   }
   \alternative {
   { f8-. c8-. f8 r8 }
   { f8-.->\< c8-.-> e8-.-> c8-.->
     f8-.-> c8-.-> e8-.-> c8-.->
     f8-.-> c8-.-> e8-.-> c8-.-> 
     f8-.-> c8-.-> e8-.-> c8-.->
     f4\f f8. f16\<
     f4 f4
     f4 r4 a4 r4
     f2(\ff
     f2\fermata) \bar "|."
   }
  }
 }
}

The best (unintentional) joke today was “As you can see, we are not the Cello Ensemble. We are Beginner Bassoons and we’re going to play All Through the Night”.