capella is a

musical notation Musical notation is any system used to visually represent music. Systems of notation generally represent the elements of a piece of music that are considered important for its performance in the context of a given musical tradition. The proce ...

program or

scorewriter 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 p ...

developed by the German company ''capella-software AG'' (formerly WHC), running on

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

or corresponding

emulators In computing, an emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run software or use perip ...

in other

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s, like

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented fruit. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruit and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Wine is most often made f ...

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

and others on

Apple Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

. 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. Capella is one of the earliest computer programs for music notation and has a relatively moderate price compared with Finale or Sibelius, though up to version 7 it ran only on Windows. Capella claims to have 300,000 users for the music notation program and 120,000 for the OCR program. Digital sheet music in capella formats is available in various online music libraries, especially in German speaking areas. The German Protestant

hymnal A hymnal or hymnary is a collection of hymns, usually in the form of a book, called a hymnbook (or hymn book). They are used in congregational singing. A hymnal may contain only hymn texts (normal for most hymnals for most centuries of Christia ...

' has been digitized using capella software. Originally available only in German, capella is now available in English (US and British), French, Dutch, Finnish, Polish (version 5.3) and

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...

(capella 2008).

Features

The current version is Capella Professional 8.0, which includes guitar chord notation ability, and

guitar tab Tablature (or tab for short) is a form of musical notation indicating instrument fingering or the location of the played notes rather than musical pitches. Tablature is common for fretted stringed instruments such as the guitar, lute or vihuela ...

writing functions, in addition to the standard music notation tools. A ''capella start'' program is offered with several restrictions for a lower price. A free ''capella reader'' can display, print and play a capella score. Data entry is possible via computer keyboard entirely, via mouse or in a combination with a MIDI keyboard. It is intended for multi staff scores like choir music, or orchestral music. Capella is a practically oriented application suited for amateur and professional musicians alike. It includes engraving as well as MIDI import and export. ''capella'' can play back the score (the full score or an arbitrary selection of staves) via the computer's sound card, to MIDI devices or using VST modules. ''capella's'' ''captune'' module allows to select the output channels and to fine-tune the sounds. Version 7 brought ''live voice extraction:'' one can switch between the view on the full score for the whole orchestra and the view on a selection of the staves of one or a group of instruments. On printing and exporting, only the voices being shown in the current view will be used. Specific instruction of individual voices can be marked as "only visible in extracted voice". Live voice extraction is also available in the free Reader program; in the limited version of the editor ''Capella start'', such live voice extractions are not available for editing. Version 7.1 introduced

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

compatibility;

UTF-8 UTF-8 is a character encoding standard used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode Transformation Format 8-bit''. Almost every webpage is transmitted as UTF-8. UTF-8 supports all 1,112,0 ...

is now the standard text encoding format.

Current features

The following modules are advertised for Capella 7 (February 2016):

capella

For the production of large complex music scores. Edit and arrange a score of voices/instruments in any number of pages of any number of staves per line, with multiple voice parts per stave. Playback with MIDI sound, import/export with other music software via MusicXML.

capella start

Cut-down version of capella with up to 4 staves per line, up to 2 voices per stave, and up to 100 bars.

Technicalities

The file format of ''capella'' evolved from a proprietary digital encoding (

filename extension A filename extension, file name extension or file extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file (for example, .txt, .mp3, .exe) that indicates a characteristic of the file contents or its intended use. A filename extension is typically d ...

*.cap) to an open,

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

text based format called CapXML with extension *.capx. There are CapXML 1.0 and 2.0 formats. Each *.capx file is a ZIP archive containing the actual XML with filename ''score.xml''. CapXML differs from MusicXML in various aspects, one being that in CapXML the basic node is the chord which can have one or more notes, whereas in MusicXML the notes of a chord are single nodes which have to be put into relation with one another. Capella can import and export MusicXML files. Documentation of CapXML and the binary CAP file format, as well as of the programming interface is available for download at the Capella website. Capella provides a programming interface for Python scripts with a set of Python-classes providing the ''capella'' object hierarchy. Python scripts can be used as a plug-in to the ''capella'' program or run stand-alone, i.e. within a Capella editing session or externally, directly on the file or group of files. CapXML scores can, of course, be directly processed by any XML-aware software. Capella-programmer Bernd Jungmann used the Python scripting to produce a

Braille Braille ( , ) is a Tactile alphabet, tactile writing system used by blindness, blind or visually impaired people. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille displays that connect to computers and smartphone device ...

-interface to Capella for blind users with a refreshable Braille display. Braille printing is possible using the ''MakeBraille'' service of the German Central Library for the Blind (DZB - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Blinde) in Leipzig, which accepts CapXML and MusicXML files as input, and offers its service for private, non-commercial uses only.

Companion products

Companion products to ''capella'' provide

Music OCR Optical music recognition (OMR) is a field of research that investigates how to computationally read musical notation in documents. The goal of OMR is to teach the computer to read and interpret sheet music and produce a machine-readable version ...

(Capella Scan, which uses the FineReader engine from the Russian company ABBYY to recognize text, including Gothic letters), music recognition out of audio files (Capella Wave Kit), music teaching and training (''rondo'', ''audite!''), composition aids (''tonica fugata'', with automatic composition of

polyphonic Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice ( monophony) or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ...

sets, canons, and

fugue In classical music, a fugue (, from Latin ''fuga'', meaning "flight" or "escape""Fugue, ''n''." ''The Concise Oxford English Dictionary'', eleventh edition, revised, ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson (Oxford and New York: Oxford Universit ...

s), and production of

accompaniment Accompaniment is the musical part which provides the rhythmic and/or harmonic support for the melody or main themes of a song or instrumental piece. There are many different styles and types of accompaniment in different genres and styles of m ...

music files or CDs for

karaoke is a type of interactive entertainment system usually offered in nightclubs and bars, where people sing along to pre-recorded accompaniment using a microphone. Its musical content is an instrumental rendition of a well-known popular song. I ...

-like uses for amateurs and professionals (Capella Playalong). ;capella-scan Convert scanned sheet music into a capella score for editing. including transposition. ;capella melody trainer Personal trainer for singers and instrumentalists. ;capella playAlong Converts capella, musicXML and MIDI to MP3 format. ;tonica fugata Add a three- or four-part harmonisation to a melody, compose a canon fugue on a given melody, analyse the harmonies in a given work. ;tonica pop Add harmonisation in 'pop' style.

History

Before ''capella'', there was ''tonica'', a program to analyse musical notation. Since some people used tonica mainly to print musical scores, the idea for a scorewriter was born. The first version was published in 1992 as a program named "Allegro", running under

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

with its own graphical interface. Since the name was already taken, the name had to be changed - taking the name from the brightest star in the constellation Auriga,

Capella Capella is the brightest star in the northern constellation of Auriga. It has the Bayer designation α Aurigae, which is Latinisation of names, Latinised to Alpha Aurigae and abbreviated Alpha Aur or α Aur. Capella is the lis ...

. Only the original file name extension ALL was kept for the binary notation file format. The first real ''capella'' is version 1.01 dated 15 May 1992. Version 1.5 was the last MS-DOS Version, published in 1993. The only alternative back then was the much more expensive Finale on

Atari ST Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

, or since 1993 Sibelius on

Acorn Computers Acorn Computers Ltd. was a British computer company established in Cambridge, England in 1978 by Hermann Hauser, Christopher Curry (businessman), Chris Curry and Andy Hopper. The company produced a number of computers during the 1980s with asso ...

. Version 2 used Windows 3.1. The file format changed to another proprietary binary format with extension CAP. Many details, including lyrics, were lost in the conversion from ALL to CAP files. Version 3.0 moved from 16-bit to 32-bit software. The file format changed again, also with some losses in the conversion. This format is internally designated as CAP3. This binary file format was kept, until the XML-based format CapXML 1.0 with extension CAPX was introduced. In 2004, scripting was introduced. Capella has always used and uses copy protection; initially by requiring the installation CD to be in the CD reader, today by requiring activation (after a trial period of 30 days). The company was originally called "whc Musiksoftware", then "whc Musiksoftware GmbH". The name was changed to "capella-software GmbH" in the fall of 2002, changing the legal form from

GmbH (; ) is a type of Juridical person, legal entity in German-speaking countries. It is equivalent to a (Sàrl) in the Romandy, French-speaking region of Switzerland and to a (Sagl) in the Ticino, Italian-speaking region of Switzerland. It is a ...

to AG (

Aktiengesellschaft (; abbreviated AG ) is a German language, German word for a corporation limited by Share (finance), share ownership (i.e., one which is owned by its shareholders) whose shares may be traded on a stock market. The term is used in Germany, Austria ...

) in March 2011. Version 8, published in late 2017, is a major rewrite of the program using the Qt, a

cross-platform Within computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several Computing platform, computing platforms. Some ...

application framework In computer programming, an application framework consists of a software framework used by software developers to implement the standard structure of application software. Application frameworks became popular with the rise of graphical user inte ...

and

widget toolkit A widget toolkit, widget library, GUI toolkit, or UX library is a library (computing), library or a collection of libraries containing a set of graphical control elements (called ''widgets'') used to construct the graphical user interface (GUI) of ...

, which made possible the publication of a version for

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

, i.e. Apple Macintosh. The Reader 8, using the Qt platform, had already been released March 29, 2016, 20 months before the main program.

References

External links

''capella'' company homepage (English)

Independent Wiki on ''capella'' with scripts to download (German)

Independent forum on ''capella'' (German)

in Capella format {{Scorewriters Scorewriters