![]() | |
![]() Sibelius, running on macOS | |
Original author(s) |
|
---|---|
Developer(s) | Avid |
Initial release | April 1993 |
Stable release | 2024.3 (6 March 2024 ) [±] |
Written in | C++ |
Operating system | Microsoft Windows, macOS, RISC OS |
Available in | 9 languages |
List of languages
| |
Type | Scorewriter |
License | Proprietary Freeware, Proprietary software |
Website | www |
Sibelius is a scorewriter program developed and released by Sibelius Software Limited (now part of Avid Technology). Beyond creating, editing and printing music scores, it can also play the music back using sampled or synthesised sounds. It produces printed scores, and can also publish them via the Internet for others to access. Less advanced versions of Sibelius at lower prices have been released, as have various add-ons for the software.
Named after the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, the company was founded in April 1993 by twin brothers Ben and Jonathan Finn to market the eponymous music notation program they had created. [1] It went on to develop and distribute various other music software products, particularly for education. In addition to its head office in Cambridge and subsequently London, Sibelius Software opened offices in the US, Australia and Japan, with distributors and dealers in many other countries worldwide. The company won numerous awards, including the Queen's Award for Innovation in 2005.
In August 2006 the company was acquired by Avid, to become part of its Digidesign division, which also manufactures the digital audio workstation Pro Tools. In July 2012, Avid announced plans to divest its consumer businesses, closed the Sibelius London office, and removed the original development team, [2] [3] [4] despite a 11,590-strong 'Save Sibelius' petition spearheading a campaign led by Derek Williams that included extensive protests on Facebook and elsewhere. [5] [6] [7] [8] Avid subsequently recruited new programmers to continue the development of Sibelius, and Steinberg hired most of the former Sibelius team to create a competing software, Dorico.
Sibelius was originally developed by British twins Jonathan and Ben Finn for the Acorn Archimedes computer under the name 'Sibelius 7', not as a version number, but reminiscent of Sibelius' Symphony No 7. [1] The Finns said they could not remember why they used Jean Sibelius' name, but it was probably because he was also ‘a Finn' (i.e. Finnish), as well as being one of their favourite composers. Development in assembly language on the RISC OS started in 1986 after they left school, and continued while they were at Oxford and Cambridge universities, respectively. Both were music students, and said they wrote the program because they did not like the laborious process of writing music by hand. [9]
The program was released to the public in April 1993 on 3.5-inch floppy disk. It required considerably less than 1 MB of memory (as its files only occupied a few KB per page of music), and the combination of assembly language and the Archimedes' ARM processor meant that it ran very quickly. No matter how long the score, changes were displayed almost instantly. A unique feature of the Sibelius GUI at that time was the ability it gave the user to drag the entire score around with the mouse, offering a bird's eye of the score, as distinct from having to use the QWERTY input keyboard arrow keys, or equivalent, to scroll the page.
The first ever user of Sibelius was the composer and engraver Richard Emsley, who provided advice on music engraving prior to the start of development, and beta tested the software before its release. The first concert performance from a Sibelius score was of an orchestral work by David Robert Coleman, copied by Emsley. The first score published using Sibelius was Antara by George Benjamin, also copied by Emsley, and published by Faber Music. Other early adopters included composer John Rutter, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, and publisher Music Sales.
As a killer application for the niche Acorn platform, Sibelius rapidly dominated the UK market. [10] It also sold in smaller numbers in a few other countries, restricted by the availability of Acorn computers. 'Lite' versions were subsequently released, and these were successful in UK schools, where Acorns were widely used. [11]
In September 1998, the first version for Windows was released as 'Sibelius', with the version number reset to 1.0. [12] A Mac version 1.2 was released a few months later, and the company thereafter used conventional version numbers for both platforms across subsequent upgrades. Scores created on one platform could be opened on the other, and were backward compatible. To produce these versions, the software was completely rewritten in C++, while retaining most of the original's functionality and user interface with numerous enhancements. The original Acorn names 'Sibelius 6' and 'Sibelius 7' were later re-used to denote versions 6 and 7 of Sibelius for Windows/Mac.
Releasing Sibelius for more widely available computers brought it to a worldwide market, particularly the US, where Sibelius Software had opened an office in late 1996. Following the break-up of Acorn Computers [13] [14] shortly after Sibelius' Windows release, no further Acorn versions were developed. Sibelius Software later opened an office in Australia, also serving New Zealand, where Sibelius was widely used.
In August 2006, Sibelius Software Ltd was acquired by Avid Technology, an American manufacturer of software and hardware for audio and video production. Avid continued publishing Sibelius as a stand-alone notation product, as well as integrating it with some of its existing software products.
In July 2012, Avid announced plans to divest itself of its other consumer businesses, closed the Sibelius London office, and laid off the original development team, [3] [15] amid an outpouring of user protest, then recruited a new team of programmers to continue Sibelius development in Montreal, Canada and Kyiv, Ukraine.
Sibelius' main function is to help create, edit and print musical scores. It supports virtually all music notations, enabling even the most complex of modern orchestral, choral, jazz, pop, folk, rock and chamber music scores to be engraved to publication quality. Further, it allows scores to be played back or turned into MIDI or audio files, e.g. to create a CD. A built-in sample player and a large range of sampled sounds are included. [24] It supports any MIDI device, and allows Virtual Studio Technology (VST) and Audio Units plug-ins to be used as playback instruments, giving users access to third-party sample libraries. [25] Score playback can also be synchronised to video, or to DAW software via the ReWire standard.
By default, Sibelius plays a brief passage from a Jean Sibelius symphony as it launches, a feature that can be disabled in the application's Preferences if desired. Each version has used a different excerpt; e.g. Sibelius 7 appropriately uses the main theme from Sibelius' 7th Symphony.
In Version 7.0, Avid Technology rebuilt Sibelius as a 64-bit application, replacing the menu navigation system of previous versions with a Ribbon interface in the process. This met with considerable user resistance, [26] however the Ribbon remains integral to the current GUI.
Add-ons for Sibelius that are currently or have previously been available include:
Sibelius users can publish their scores directly from the software via the Internet using desktops, laptops or iPads. Anyone else using software called Sibelius Scorch [54] (free for web browsers, charged for on iPads) can then view these scores, play them back, transpose them, change instruments, or print them from the web browser version. ScoreExchange.com is a website where any Sibelius user can upload scores they have composed, arranged or transcribed with Sibelius, so that anyone can access the music. The site began in 2001 as SibeliusMusic.com, and by June 2011 had amassed nearly 100,000 scores. The iPad version of Scorch also includes a store containing over 250,000 scores from publishers Music Sales, Hal Leonard, and Sibelius Scorch is used in the websites of various music publishers and individual musicians. Publishers can licence the Sibelius Internet Edition for commercial online publishing.
In October 2017, Scorch was replaced by Sibelius Cloud Publishing, providing publishers with an API to automate the publishing and selling of digital sheet Music. [55] It uses the same technology as Scorch to allow Sibelius users to share music online directly from within the program, and addresses compatibility issues. [56]
There are various education-specific features for Sibelius' large market of schools and universities. The Sibelius Educational Suite [57] includes extensive built-in music teaching materials, and the ability to run and manage multiple copies of the software on a network at discounted educational pricing.
In 2012, Sibelius Student was replaced by a new version of Sibelius First.
Lite notation based on Sibelius is included in Avid's Pro Tools audio editing software.
A network licence is available for schools, colleges, universities and other multi-client situations. [58]
Awards for the software include:
MIDI is a technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and related audio devices for playing, editing, and recording music.
Digital music technology encompasses the use of digital instruments, computers, electronic effects units, software, or digital audio equipment by a performer, composer, sound engineer, DJ, or record producer to produce, perform or record music. The term refers to electronic devices, instruments, computer hardware, and software used in performance, playback, recording, composition, mixing, analysis, and editing of music.
A sampler is an electronic musical instrument that records and plays back samples. Samples may comprise elements such as rhythm, melody, speech, sound effects or longer portions of music.
FL Studio is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed by the Belgian company Image-Line. It features a graphical user interface with a pattern-based music sequencer. It is available in four different editions for Microsoft Windows and macOS.
Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH is a German musical software and hardware company based in Hamburg. It develops software for writing, recording, arranging and editing music, most notably Cubase, Nuendo, and Dorico. It also designs audio and MIDI hardware interfaces, controllers, and iOS/Android music apps including Cubasis. Steinberg created several industry standard music technologies including the Virtual Studio Technology (VST) format for plug-ins and the ASIO protocol. Steinberg has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Yamaha since 2005.
Pro Tools is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed and released by Avid Technology for Microsoft Windows and macOS. It is used for music creation and production, sound for picture and, more generally, sound recording, editing, and mastering processes.
GarageBand is a software application by Apple for macOS, iPadOS, and iOS devices that allows users to create music or podcasts. GarageBand was originally released for macOS in 2004 and brought to iOS in 2011. The app's music and podcast creation system enables users to create multiple tracks with pre-made MIDI keyboards, pre-made loops, an array of various instrumental effects, and voice recordings.
A scorewriter, or music notation program is software for creating, editing and printing sheet music. A scorewriter is to music notation what a word processor is to text, in that they typically provide flexible editing and automatic layout, and produce high-quality printed results.
The Akai MPC is a series of music workstations produced by Akai from 1988 onwards. MPCs combine sampling and sequencing functions, allowing users to record portions of sound, modify them and play them back as sequences.
Avid Audio is an American digital audio technology company. It was founded in 1984 by Peter Gotcher and Evan Brooks. The company began as a project to raise money for the founders' band, selling EPROM chips for drum machines. It is a subsidiary of Avid Technology, and during 2010 the Digidesign brand was phased out. Avid Audio products will continue to be produced and will now carry the Avid brand name.
capella is a musical notation program or scorewriter developed by the German company capella-software AG, running on Microsoft Windows or corresponding emulators in other operating systems, like Wine on Linux and others on Apple Macintosh. Capella requires to be activated after a trial period of 30 days. The publisher writes the name in lower case letters only. The program was initially created by Hartmut Ring, and is now maintained and developed by Bernd Jungmann.
Logic Pro is a proprietary digital audio workstation (DAW) and MIDI sequencer software application for the macOS platform developed by Apple Inc. It was originally created in the early 1990s as Notator Logic, or Logic, by German software developer C-Lab which later went by Emagic. Apple acquired Emagic in 2002 and renamed Logic to Logic Pro. It was the second most popular DAW – after Ableton Live – according to a survey conducted in 2015.
M-Audio is a business unit of inMusic Brands that designs and markets audio and MIDI interfaces, keyboards and MIDI controllers, synthesizers, loudspeakers, studio monitors, digital DJ systems, microphones, and music software. The company has independent offices in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, France and Japan.
Overture is a music notation (scorewriter) program for Windows and Macintosh platforms, published and developed by Sonic Scores. While Overture is primarily a scorewriter program, it also allows editing the score's MIDI audio playback data in the manner of sequencer and digital audio workstation (DAW) software.
Cross/CrossDJ is a digital vinyl and DJ mixing software developed by the French company Mixvibes. This software provides DJs with a digital platform with which they can mix and perform their music. Since its release in 2008, it has become Mixvibes primary focus.
Vienna Symphonic Library GmbH (VSL) is a developer of sample libraries and music production software for classical orchestral music. The company is located in a landmark protected building, called Synchron Stage Vienna based in the Austrian capital's 23rd district.
Dorico is a scorewriter software; along with Finale and Sibelius, it is one of the three leading professional-level music notation programs.
Derek Leslie Williams is a New Zealand-born Scottish composer, orchestrator, conductor and record producer. He was awarded a doctorate by the University of Edinburgh under Nigel Osborne and Peter Nelson for composition of his eponymous opera, Wilde, and he is a Fellow of Trinity College London. Williams is a civil rights activist known for his 'Save Sibelius' campaign in the United Kingdom (2012–2013). Since 2007, he has taught Composition and Orchestration at the Edinburgh University Reid School of Music. He is currently serving his 7th term as Chair of the Wagner Society of Scotland, a member of the International Association of Wagner Societies (RWVI) and at the 2024 Assembly of Delegates, was elected to serve a 5-year term on the RWVI Presidium.
Many composers bought an Archimedes simply to have access to the program.