Sibelius is ascorewriter program developed and released by Sibelius Software (now part ofAvid). Beyond creating, editing and printing music scores, it can alsoplay the music back using sampled or synthesised sounds. It produces printed scores, and can also publish themvia the Internet for others to access.Less advanced versions of Sibelius at lower prices have been released, as havevarious add-ons for the software.
Named after the Finnish composerJean Sibelius, the company was founded in April 1993 by twin brothers Ben and Jonathan Finn to market the eponymousmusic notation program they had created.[2] 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 numerousawards, including theQueen's Award for Innovation in 2005.
In August 2006 the company was acquired byAvid, to become part of itsDigidesign division, which also manufactures thedigital audio workstationPro Tools. In July 2012, Avid announced plans to divest its consumer businesses, closed the Sibelius London office, and removed the original development team,[3][4][5] despite a 11,590-strong'Save Sibelius' petition spearheading a campaign led byDerek Williams that included extensive protests on Facebook and elsewhere.[6][7][8][9] Avid subsequently recruited new programmers to continue the development of Sibelius, andSteinberg 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 theAcorn Archimedes computer under the name 'Sibelius 7', not as a version number, but reminiscent of Sibelius'Symphony No 7.[2] The Finns said they could not remember why they usedJean Sibelius' name, but it was probably because he was also 'a Finn' (i.e. Finnish), as well as being one of their favourite composers. They started developing the software (entirely inassembly language) in the summer of 1986, just after they left school, and continued while studying atOxford andCambridge universities, respectively. Both brothers were composers, and wrote the program to automate the laborious process of writing music out by hand.[10]
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 SibeliusGUI 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 theQWERTY input keyboard arrow keys, or equivalent, to scroll the page.
The first ever user of Sibelius was the composer and engraverRichard Emsley, who provided advice onmusic engraving prior to the start of development, andbeta tested the software before its release. The first concert performance from a Sibelius score was the premiere ofPlus Loin for chamber orchestra byDavid Robert Coleman, copied by Emsley. The first score published using Sibelius wasAntara byGeorge Benjamin, also copied by Emsley, and published byFaber Music. Otherearly adopters included composerJohn Rutter, conductorMichael Tilson Thomas, and publisherMusic Sales.
As akiller application for the nicheAcorn platform, Sibelius rapidly dominated the UK market.[11] 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.[12]
In September 1998, the first version for Windows was released as 'Sibelius', with the version number reset to 1.0.[13] A Mac version 1.2 was released a few months later, and the company thereafter usedconventional version numbers for both platforms across subsequent upgrades. The Windows and Mac versions were essentially identical, and scores created on one platform could be opened on the other. To produce these versions, the software was completely rewritten from scratch inC++, while retaining most of the original Acorn version's functionality and user interface, plus 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[14][15] 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 byAvid 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,[4][16] amid an outpouring of user protest, then recruited a new team of programmers to continue Sibelius development inMontreal, Canada andKyiv, Ukraine.
1986: Founders Jonathan and Ben Finn start developingSibelius 7 for Acorn computers.
1993: Sibelius Software founded to sellSibelius 7 and related computer hardware/software in the UK. Early customers include Europe's largest publisher Music Sales, choral composer John Rutter, and the Royal Academy of Music.Sibelius 6 (educational version) also launched.
1994: Distribution in Europe, Australia and New Zealand commences.Sibelius 7 Student (educational version) launched.
1995: German versions of Sibelius launched.
1996: US office opened in California.Junior Sibelius (primary school program) launched.
1998:Sibelius for Windows launched worldwide. Company ceases selling hardware to concentrate on core software business.[17]
1999:Sibelius for Mac,PhotoScore andScorch launched. Sibelius forms US subsidiary, creating the Sibelius Group, which now has 25 employees. Quester VCT invests.[18]
2000:Sibelius Internet Edition launched, and adopted for Internet publishing by leading European publishers Music Sales and Boosey & Hawkes. SibeliusMusic.com andSibelius Notes (initially calledTeaching Tools) launched.[19]
2001: World's largestsheet music publisherHal Leonard also adoptsSibelius Internet Edition. Sibelius Group reaches 50 employees.
2002: Sibelius is first major music program forMac OS X. Company acquires music software company MIDIworks.[20]
2003:Starclass,Instruments,G7 and G7music.net launched. Sibelius Group commences distributingMusition andAuralia. Sibelius in Japanese launched, distributed byYamaha.
2004:Compass,Kontakt Gold,Sibelius Student Edition, Sibelius in French and Spanish launched. Company acquiresSequenceXtra. Sibelius software used in more than 50% of UK secondary schools.
2005: Australian subsidiary formed after acquiring Australian distributor. Company reaches 75 employees. WinsQueen's Award for Enterprise.[21] Releases Rock & Pop Collection of sounds. Commences distributingO-Generator.
2006:Groovy Music andColoured Keyboard launched. Sibelius Software bought byAvid Technology.
2007: Japanese office opened.
2012: Avid closes Sibelius' London office and lays off original development team, sparking the'Save Sibelius' campaign.[7]
2014: First release of a Sibelius version (7.5) by the new development team.[22]
2018:Sibelius First (free, entry-level product),Sibelius (formerlySibelius First) andSibelius Ultimate (formerlySibelius) launched together with a new year-based versioning system.
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 andchamber music scores to be engraved to publication quality. Further, it allows scores to be played back or turned intoMIDI or audio files, e.g. to create a CD. A built-in sample player and a large range of sampled sounds are included.[25] It supports any MIDI device, and allowsVirtual Studio Technology (VST) andAudio Units plug-ins to be used as playback instruments, giving users access tothird-party sample libraries.[26] Score playback can also be synchronised to video, or toDAW software via theReWire standard.
By default, Sibelius plays a brief passage from aJean 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 fromSibelius' 7th Symphony.
Neuratron'sMusic OCR programPhotoScore (scanning),[42][43] which can be used to scan and create a Sibelius score from printed music andPDF documents. Alite version is bundled with Sibelius.
Neuratron'sAudioScore,[44] also bundled in a lite version, which claims to be able to turn singing or anacoustic instrument performance into a score,[45] though many users have complained that this does not work.[46][47]AudioScore currently holds a two-star rating oncnet.com.[48]
Mobile device VNC controllers such as iPad Sibelius Wizard[51][52] and Sibelius Control for iPad,[53][54] allowing the user to control Sibelius wirelessly via shortcuts set up within the Preferences.
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[55] (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 publishersMusic 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 anAPI to automate the publishing and selling of digital sheet Music.[56] It uses the same technology as Scorch to allow Sibelius users to share music online directly from within the program, and addresses compatibility issues.[57]
There are various education-specific features for Sibelius' large market of schools and universities. The Sibelius Educational Suite[58] includes extensive built-in music teaching materials, and the ability to run and manage multiple copies of the softwareon 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'sPro Tools audio editing software.
Auto-Optimize staff spacing, added Dashed and Dotted and Tie-into Ties, added three house styles and manuscript papers, implementing wild-cards and large film-score time signatures.[79]
Free tier available, with all three tiers combined into one installer. Improvements in note spacing, grace notes, multi-text entry, tied notes and others.[86]
2018.5
17 May 2018
Maintenance release to fix an issue where running some plug-ins would cause a memory leak that slowed Sibelius down until it was relaunched.[87]
2018.4
April 2018
Multi-edits for text, improved note spacing and rebranded asSibelius Ultimate.[88]
2018.1
January 2018
New versioning scheme, improved workflow enhancements.[89]
Newribbon-based user interface.[111] This version of Sibelius (and all future versions) is no longer supported onMac OS X v10.5 or earlier, and Mac computers withPowerPC processors; the last version with this support is Sibelius 6.2.[112][113]
^Bourgeois, Derek (1 November 2001)."Score yourself an orchestra".The Guardian.Archived from the original on 10 May 2014. Retrieved10 May 2011.Many composers bought an Archimedes simply to have access to the program.
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