Sibelius (scorewriter): Difference between revisions
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| Developer(s) | Sibelius Software |
|---|---|
| Initial release | 1993 |
| Stable release | |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, Mac OS X, RISC OS |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | www.sibelius.com |
Sibelius is a scorewriter program, created by Sibelius Software, used in the music industry by composers, arrangers and music publishers to create scores and parts for musical compositions and arrangements. Sibelius was conceived and developed by twins Ben and Jonathan Finn, and was first released for Acorn Risc PC computers before Windows and Mac versions were released in 1998 and 1999. It is now one of the most popular programs of this type[1], with "hundreds of thousands of users in 100 countries"[2] and the software is used widely in education, sheet music publishing (both on paper and via digital distribution), by professional composers, arrangers and copyists, and by amateur musicians at home.
History
Sibelius was originally developed by British twins Ben and Jonathan Finn for the Acorn Archimedes and Risc PC computers, and was one of the best-known products for those computers. Development was started in 1987, just after the Finns left school, and the program was released in 1993.
In 1998 and 1999, the first versions for Windows and Macintosh were released.[3] The current Sibelius, version 5, was launched on 8 June 2007.
The main competitor to Sibelius is Finale.
The first ever user of Sibelius was the composer and copyist Richard Emsley, who provided advice on music engraving aspects of the software and used it before it was first released to the public. The first score published using Sibelius was Antara by George Benjamin, published by Faber Music and copied by Emsley.
Features
Sibelius includes features that allows scores to be played back or burned to an audio CD. The third-party program Photoscore can be used to scan and create a Sibelius score from printed music; a lite version of Photoscore is bundled with the Sibelius software.[4] Sibelius Scorch, a web browser plugin enables users to publish scores created in Sibelius on the Internet. It is used by SibeliusMusic.com (see below), various music publishers' web sites, and web sites of individual musicians.
The Sibelius bundle includes Native Instruments' Kontakt Player 2 and a range of sounds called Sibelius Sounds Essentials. Sibelius 5 allows for VST and Audio Unit plug-ins to be used as playback instruments, giving Sibelius users access to high-end sample libraries (such as Vienna Symphonic Library or MOTU's Symphonic Instrument).[5]
The current version of the program plays a brief passage from a recording of Jean Sibelius's 3rd Symphony as it starts; Sibelius 5 on the PC currently plays the introduction to the third movement, unless this option is switched off in the program's preferences. So far, each Windows/Macintosh Sibelius version has used a different excerpt from a Sibelius symphony.
Compact versions
Compact versions of Sibelius have been released for Acorn computers (Sibelius 7 Student, Sibelius 6 and Junior Sibelius) and more recently for Windows and Macintosh platforms (Sibelius Student and Sibelius First). A Sibelius version for guitarists and songwriters called G7 is also available, though it has not been updated for several years.
Name
The name Sibelius for both software and company is a namesake of the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. Some users have also speculated that it was taken from developers' surname 'Finn', as Sibelius was a Finn (i.e. Finnish). Nonetheless, the Finn brothers maintain that they cannot really remember the reason.
The original Acorn version of the software was called Sibelius 7, but the "7" was not a version number. It may have been an allusion to Sibelius's 7th Symphony, a short excerpt of which is played upon opening the program. For the Windows and Macintosh versions the company dropped the "7" and began using conventional version numbers instead. It is not clear what will happen to the name if and when the software's version number reaches 7.
Users
Sibelius is used by professionals and amateurs for composing, arranging and writing out music, in addition to being widely used as an educational tool. In the professional world, it is used by composers Alf Clausen, Steve Reich, Michael Tilson-Thomas, Jamie Cullum, Howard Goodall, Harry Gregson-Williams, Lalo Schifrin, and others. It is also used at music schools such as the Royal Academy of Music, Trinity College of Music, the Juilliard School of Music, Chetham's School Of Music, Mannes College, and the Berklee College of Music, and thousands of high schools in the UK, USA and other countries.
Sibelius Music.com
SibeliusMusic.com is a web site where composers can upload scores they have created with Sibelius, so that anyone can view, play back, buy, and print the music using Sibelius Scorch. Some scores are sold, others are free. If a composer decides to sell music, Sibelius will take a commission off each sale. SibeliusMusic began in 2001, and by July 2008 had approximately 80,000 scores – more than any other web site. It is also one of the most popular sites that use the Scorch plug-in. SibeliusMusic has a similar concept to any social music uploading sites, such as MySpace Music.
See also
References
- ^ Matthew Nicholl & Richard Grudzinski, Music Notation: Preparing Scores and Parts, ed. Jonathan Feist. Boston: Berklee Press (2007): 5
- ^ Sibelius corporate information
- ^ "Sibelius Corporate Information". Sibelius Software. Retrieved 2007-05-21.
- ^ "Sibelius Product Information". Sibelius Software. Retrieved 2007-05-21.
- ^ "VST play back in Sibelius 5". Sibelius Software. Retrieved 2007-06-09.
External links
- Scorch, a Web browser plugin for reading digital sheet music
- QI Theme by Howard Goodall, an example of music created with Sibelius, played in scorch
- Sibelius Software Ltd
- SibeliusMusic, Sibelius Software's own online music publishing website
- DS Music, DS Music is the largest retailer supplying Sibelius Software in the UK