Igor Engraver is a scorewriter for the

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

and

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

s, created by Swedish composer Peter Bengtson and published by the Swedish company NoteHeads. Bengtson stated on the Igor-Talk mailing list that he named Igor after the stock character in various

horror movie Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes. Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, ap ...

s (including the

Frankenstein ''Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. ''Frankenstein'' tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific ...

films), and to commemorate Russian composer

Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the ...

. Despite delays in publishing the first version, Igor Engraver was widely praised for its unprecedented ease of use and revolutionary user interface. Users also appreciated its ability to automatically create instrument parts from full scores rather than requiring them to be created separately. (This feature first appeared in the notation program Composer's Mosaic, but Igor's is one of the earliest implementations, well before those of

Sibelius Jean Sibelius ( ; ; born Johan Julius Christian Sibelius; 8 December 186520 September 1957) was a Finnish composer of the late Romantic and early-modern periods. He is widely regarded as his country's greatest composer, and his music is often ...

and Finale.) Igor is written almost entirely in the

Lisp programming language Lisp (historically LISP) is a family of programming languages with a long history and a distinctive, fully parenthesized prefix notation. Originally specified in 1960, Lisp is the second-oldest high-level programming language still in common u ...

. For a short time, Igor was released as

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for t ...

with the hope that online sales of scores would finance it. This was cancelled after it was found unfeasible. In 2002, Peter Bengtson retired from active involvement in the company, which is now owned by

Björn Ulvaeus Björn Kristian Ulvaeus (; born 25 April 1945) is a Swedish singer, songwriter, producer, a member of the musical group ABBA, and co-composer of the musicals '' Chess'', '' Kristina från Duvemåla'', and ''Mamma Mia!'' He co-produced the films ...

(formerly of the pop group

ABBA ABBA ( , , formerly named Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid or Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Frida) are a Swedish supergroup formed in Stockholm in 1972 by Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. The group's ...

), Christer Sturmark (a Swedish author, I.T. entrepreneur and debater on religion and humanism),

Per Gessle Per Håkan Gessle (; born 12 January 1959) is a Swedish singer, songwriter and guitarist. He is best known as the male half and primary songwriter of the Swedish pop rock duo Roxette, which he formed with Marie Fredriksson in 1986 and which was ...

(a member of the pop groups

Gyllene Tider Gyllene Tider (; "Golden Times") was a Swedish pop group fronted by Roxette singer, guitarist and songwriter Per Gessle. They were one of the best-selling Swedish bands ever and have had numerous hits in Scandinavia, starting with the break-th ...

and Roxette), and Cons T. Åhs (a computer science researcher). The original Igor website URL www.noteheads.com redirects now to the page of Christer Sturmark; no new version of the program has been released. In 2009, a notice appeared on the website's original home page, addressing rumours about NoteHeads which had circulated on the Internet (without saying what the rumours were). It declared that the company was under new ownership, that a new version of Igor would be released in the near future, and that it would be free for users of version 1.7 (the last published version). There has been no activity since then.

References

{{Scorewriters Scorewriters Lisp (programming language) software

See also

References