Solo string on same staff

[MichelRE]

Normally I have no issue with a solo string player being marked on a staff along with the tutti,
but here I have a bit of an issue with the "gli altri" being divisi, and ONLY the inside half playing at first, then the outside half joining later, and the solo reintegrating its spot in that section.

So this is what I came up with. I have no room to add a new staff for that solo string player, it HAS to be on the same staff as the other 1st violins.

Is the way I handled it understandable?

Or am I better off specifying "½ intérieure" for the first group entrance, then "½ extérieure" for the entry of the other half of the players?

[Magnus Johansson]

Hello, Michel! I think your music example is understandable. The dashed line for the solo violin helps clarify the situation.

[RMK]

This is unclear to me.

Which half plays the C-sharp? (I see from your explanation it is the inside players, but this is not indicated in your score).

Is there really no way you could put the solo player on a separate staff? Perhaps only in the extracted part (using an ossia staff)? That would be the least ambiguous.

As you have it now, I can foresee about five minutes of rehearsal time being used to explain this.

[MichelRE]

This is why I also asked whether I'd be better using the text marking "la ½ intérieure" for the "la metà" entry.

Unfortunately, also, using an ossia staff means those notes will not play back.

I replaced the "la metà" with "la ½ intérieure", and added a dashed line from the solo's G# to the upper C , with the text "col tutti" in small letters on that dashed line.

[RMK]

That's better, in my opinion.

[John Ruggero]

You could also keep all the stems of the solo violin up and place whole rests under both measures.

[MichelRE]

John, the only problem with whole-bar rests in 5/4 with dashed separator barlines (it shifts often 2+3 to 3+2) is that the whole rests really look funny sort of off kilter from that dashed barline.

I know it's NOT standard, but I've been using rests of the value of the bar subdivisions.

I did try to add rests for the "gli altri" bars, and it actually looks good, so thank-you for that suggestion.

[John Ruggero]

Then perhaps dotted half and half rests under the solo part? As far as know, there is nothing non-standard about that when a measure is subdivided with a dashed bar line. The stems up in the solo part might make the dotted line showing the voice-leading unnecessary.

[MichelRE]

The stems up in the solo part might make the dotted line showing the voice-leading unnecessary.

OH! Good catch! That one slipped by me. Effectively, no need for the dotted lines now (which I felt added a tiny bit of clutter.)

[MichelRE]

This is the solution I came up with.

Dorico wanted to default the voice 2 rests in the 1st bar to much lower, and then the rests in the 2nd bar to much higher (sitting on the 2nd staff line.)
It looked wonky to me, but I'm not sure this is necessarily better.
The first measure's default position was at least 2 spaces down, which created this huge hole between the rests and the staff.

by the way, I KNOW that if two voices on a staff have independent stems that they shouldn't share fermatas, but it just made SO many fermatas on some staves that I decided to reduce it to a single fermata per staff, regardless of number of voices. I figured that musicians would understand that the fermata applies to both voices (am I over-estimating musical intelligence?)