#### 3.14.9 Hiding staves

In orchestral scores, staff lines that only have rests are usually removed. This saves some space. This style is called `French Score'. For Lyrics, ChordNames and FiguredBass, this is switched on by default. When these line of these contexts turn out empty after the line-breaking process, they are removed.

For normal staves, a specialized Staff context is available, which does the same: staves containing nothing (or only multi measure rests) are removed. The context definition is stored in `\RemoveEmptyStaffContext` variable. Observe how the second staff in this example disappears in the second line

>          \score  {
>            \notes \relative c' <<
>              \new Staff { e4 f g a \break c1 }
>              \new Staff { c4 d e f \break R1 }
>            >>
>            \paper {
>              linewidth = 6.\cm
>              \context { \RemoveEmptyStaffContext }
>            }
>          }

The first page shows all staves in full. If empty staves should be removed from the first page too, set `remove-first` to false in RemoveEmptyVerticalGroup.

Another application is making ossia sections, i.e. alternative melodies on a separate piece of staff, with help of a Frenched staff. See input/test/ossia.ly for an example.

Read comments on this page, or add one. This page is for LilyPond-2.2.2 (stable-branch).