EXAMPLES OF CHROMATIC NOTATION FOR MODERN LYRES - V.

This is an example of some more complex music written in lyre notation. A beautiful piece written by a French romantic composer Léon Boëllmann - “Prière à Notre-Dame” is originally a composition for organ, a part of “Suite Gothique”. Playing this on a single lyre is a real challenge requiring some advanced skills, it is however possible and actually very suitable for the lyre. There is not much alteration from the original organ score apart from its quite different look. The organ score spreading across three staves (two manual + one pedal) was condensed into single 4-octaves chromatic staff. This is an important attribute of the lyre notation: The music is usually (although not necessarily) written in a single condensed staff (with octaves stacked up as needed) as the lyre player’s hands always integrate and interact together as opposed to e.g. keyboard instruments or a harp where the right hand usually plays the treble and the left hand is set for the bass. Therefore, there is not much benefit for a lyre player to have multiple staves for a single instrument (unless it is required to clearly see the voices separately). The condensed staff also considerably shrinks the vertical space where notes are written which can help reading them. And the original organ score of the Prière took up whole four pages while for the lyre, two was enough. This is also an example of a score with frequent use of accidentals - almost every note in the original score has either flat, sharp, or natural sign. Something that chromatic notation solves neatly... Anyway, here is the music: