Sibelius (computer program)
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| Sibelius | |
|---|---|
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 Sibelius 5.1, running under Microsoft Windows Vista |
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| Developed by | Sibelius Software |
| Initial release | 1993 |
| Latest release | 5.2 18 April 2008 |
| OS | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, Mac OS X, RISC OS |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | www.sibelius.com |
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The introduction of this article is too short. To comply with Wikipedia's lead section guidelines, it should be expanded to summarize the article. |
Sibelius is a proprietary scorewriter program, created by the company Sibelius Software. Along with Finale, Sibelius is one of the most popular music notation programs.[1] Sibelius claims "hundreds of thousands of users in 100 countries"[2]
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[edit] Origin
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.
[edit] 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, 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.
[edit] Lite versions
Lite 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 3.5 and Sibelius 5 Student). A Sibelius version for guitarists and songwriters called G7 is also available.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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, 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 and Berklee College of Music, and thousands of high schools in the UK, USA and other countries.
[edit] Sibelius Music.com
SibeliusMusic.com is a web site where composers can post music they have created with Sibelius, so that anyone can view, play back, alter and print the music using Sibelius Scorch. Some scores are sold, others are free. SibeliusMusic began in 2001, and by December 2006 had approximately 60,000 scores – more than any other web site. It is also one of the most popular sites that use the Scorch plug-in.
Scores can be searched (by genre, instrumentation, duration, etc.), reviewed, and voted on. The site also features Top 10 charts of the most popular scores, and a chat page.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Matthew Nicholl & Richard Grudzinski, Music Notation: Preparing Scores and Parts, ed. Jonathan Feist. Boston: Berklee Press (2007): 5
- ^ http://www.sibelius.com/documents/index.html
- ^ Sibelius Corporate Information. Sibelius Software. Retrieved on 2007-05-21.
- ^ Sibelius Product Information. Sibelius Software. Retrieved on 2007-05-21.
- ^ VST play back in Sibelius 5. Sibelius Software. Retrieved on 2007-06-09.
[edit] 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
