Music engraving is the
art
Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.
There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...
of drawing
music notation
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...
at high quality for the purpose of mechanical reproduction. The term ''music copying'' is almost equivalent—though ''music engraving'' implies a higher degree of skill and quality, usually for publication. The name of the process originates in plate
engraving
Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a Burin (engraving), burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or Glass engraving, glass ...
, a widely used technique dating from the late sixteenth century.
The term ''engraving'' is now used to refer to any high-quality method of drawing
music notation
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...
, particularly on a
computer
A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...
("computer engraving" or "computer setting") or by hand ("hand engraving").
Traditional engraving techniques
Elements of music engraving style
Mechanical music engraving began in the middle of the fifteenth century. As
musical composition
Musical composition can refer to an original piece or work of music, either vocal or instrumental, the structure of a musical piece or to the process of creating or writing a new piece of music. People who create new compositions are called ...
increased in complexity, so too did the technology required to produce accurate
musical scores. Unlike literary printing, which mainly contains printed words, music engraving communicates several different types of information simultaneously. To be clear to musicians, it is imperative that engraving techniques allow absolute precision. Notes of
chords
Chord may refer to:
* Chord (music), an aggregate of musical pitches sounded simultaneously
** Guitar chord a chord played on a guitar, which has a particular tuning
* Chord (geometry), a line segment joining two points on a curve
* Chord ( ...
,
dynamic markings, and other notation line up with vertical accuracy. If text is included, each syllable matches vertically with its assigned melody. Horizontally, subdivisions of beats are marked not only by their flags and
beams, but also by the relative space between them on the page.
The logistics of creating such precise copies posed several problems for early music engravers, and have resulted in the development of several music engraving technologies.
Movable type
Similar to book printing, music printing began in the fifteenth century with the use of
movable type
Movable type (US English; moveable type in British English) is the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual alphanumeric characters or punctuatio ...
. The central problem posed to early music engravers using moveable type was the proper integration of notes, staves, and text. Often, staff lines were hand drawn prior to printing, or added to the printed music afterward.
Ottavio Petrucci, one of the most innovative music printers working at the turn of the sixteenth century, used a triple impression technique that printed staves, text, and notes in three separate steps.
Plate engraving
Although
plate engraving had been used since the early fifteenth century for creating visual art and maps, it was not applied to music until 1581.
In this method, a mirror image of a complete page of music was engraved onto a metal plate. Ink was then applied to the grooves, and the music print was transferred onto paper. Metal plates could be stored and reused, which made this method an attractive option for music engravers.
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...
was the initial metal of choice for early plates, but by the eighteenth century
pewter
Pewter () is a malleable metal alloy consisting of tin (85–99%), antimony (approximately 5–10%), copper (2%), bismuth, and sometimes silver. Copper and antimony (and in antiquity lead) act as hardeners, but lead may be used in lower grades ...
became the standard material due to its malleability and lower cost.
At first, plates were engraved freely by hand. Eventually, music engravers developed a number of tools to aid in their process, including:
* Scorers for staves and
bar lines, the use of which inspired the term
musical score
* Elliptical gravers for
crescendos and diminuendos
* Flat gravers for
ties TIES may refer to:
* TIES, Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science
* TIES, The Interactive Encyclopedia System
* TIES, Time Independent Escape Sequence
* Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science
The ''Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science' ...
and
ledger lines
A ledger line or leger line is used in Western musical notation to notate pitches above or below the lines and spaces of the regular musical staff. A line slightly longer than the note head is drawn parallel to the staff, above or below, spaced ...
*
Punches for
note head
In music, a notehead is the part of a note, usually elliptical in shape, whose placement on the staff indicates the pitch, to which modifications are made that indicate duration. Noteheads may be the same shape but colored completely b ...
s,
clefs
A clef (from French: 'key') is a musical symbol used to indicate which notes are represented by the lines and spaces on a musical stave. Placing a clef on a stave assigns a particular pitch to one of the five lines, which defines the pit ...
,
accidentals
In music, an accidental is a note of a pitch (or pitch class) that is not a member of the scale or mode indicated by the most recently applied key signature. In musical notation, the sharp (), flat (), and natural () symbols, among others, ma ...
, and letters
Plate engraving was the methodology of choice for music printing until the late nineteenth century, at which point its decline was hastened by the development of photographic technology.
Nevertheless, the technique has survived to the present day, and is still occasionally used by select publishers such as
G. Henle Verlag in Germany.
Hand copying
Historically, a musician was required to draw his own
staff lines (staves) onto blank paper. Eventually, staff paper was manufactured pre-printed with staves as a labor-saving technique. The musician could then write music directly onto the lines in pencil or ink.
In the twentieth century, music staff paper was sometimes printed on
vellum
Vellum is prepared animal skin or membrane, typically used as writing material. Parchment is another term for this material, from which vellum is sometimes distinguished, when it is made from calfskin, as opposed to that made from other anima ...
or
onionskin
Onionskin or onion skin is a thin, lightweight, strong, often translucent paper. Though not made from onions, it superficially resembles their thin, papery skins. It was usually used with carbon paper for typing duplicates in a typewriter, for ...
—a durable, semi-transparent material that made it easier for the musician to correct mistakes and revise the work, and also made it possible to reproduce the manuscript through the
ozalid process. Also at this time, a
music copyist
A copyist is a person that makes duplications of the same thing. The term is sometimes used for artists who make copies of other artists' paintings. However, the modern use of the term is almost entirely confined to music copyists, who are emplo ...
was often employed to hand-copy individual parts (for each performer) from a composer's full score. Neatness, speed, and accuracy were desirable traits of a skilled copyist.
Other techniques
*
Lithography
Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...
: Similar to metal plate engraving, the music was etched onto limestone and then burned onto the surface with acid to preserve the stone plates for future use.
* Stencils, stamps, and dry transfers, including the Notaset, a system inspired by the
Letraset
Letraset was a company known mainly for manufacturing sheets of typefaces and other artwork elements using the dry transfer method. Letraset has been acquired by the Colart group and become part of its subsidiary Winsor & Newton.
Corporate his ...
used in the twentieth century. Brushing ink through stencils was a high-quality technique used by
Amersham-based company Halstan & Co.
* Music
typewriters
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...
: Originally developed in the late nineteenth century, this technology did not become popular until the mid-1900s. The machines required the use of pre-printed
manuscript paper
Manuscript paper (sometimes staff paper in U.S. English, or just music paper) is paper preprinted with staves ready for musical notation. Manuscript paper is also available for drum notation and guitar tabulature.Sainsbury, Christopher. “Bi- ...
. This technique produced low-quality results and was never widely used.
"Machine Types Simplified Music."
''Popular Science'', August 1948, p. 143.
Computer music engraving
With the advent of the personal computer
A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...
since the 1980s, traditional music engraving has been in decline, as it can now be accomplished by computer software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
designed for this purpose. There are various such programs, known as 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 ...
s, designed for writing, editing, printing and playing back music, though only a few produce results of a quality comparable to high-quality traditional engraving. Scorewriters have many advanced features, such as the ability to extract individual parts from an orchestral/band score, to transcribe music played on a MIDI
MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and re ...
keyboard, and conversely to play back notation via MIDI.
Beginning in the 1980s, WYSIWYG
In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...
software such as 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 ...
, Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his ra ...
, MuseScore, Finale, and Dorico
Dorico () is a scorewriter software; along with Finale and Sibelius, it is one of the three leading professional-level music notation programs.
Dorico's development team consists of most of the former core developers of a rival software, Sibe ...
first let musicians enter complex music notation on a computer screen, displaying it just as it will look when eventually printed. Such software stores the music in files of proprietary or standardized formats, usually not directly readable by humans.
Other software, such as GNU LilyPond
LilyPond is a computer program and file format for music engraving. One of LilyPond's major goals is to produce scores that are engraved with traditional layout rules, reflecting the era when scores were engraved by hand.
LilyPond is cross-pl ...
and Philip's Music Writer
In computing, Philip's Music Writer or PMW, formerly known as Philip's Music Scribe or PMS, is a music scorewriter written by Philip Hazel. It was mentioned in the Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities publication ''Computing in ...
, reads input from ordinary text files whose contents resemble a computer macro programming language that describes bare musical content with little or no layout specification. The software translates the usually handwritten description into fully engraved graphical pages to view or send for printing, taking care of appearance decisions from high level layout down to glyph drawing. The music entry process is iterative and is similar to the edit-compile-execute cycle used to debug computer programs.
Beside ready-made applications
Application may refer to:
Mathematics and computing
* Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks
** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...
there are also some programming libraries for music engraving, such a
Vexflow
(Javascript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...
library)
Verovio
(C++, Javascript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...
and Python
Python may refer to:
Snakes
* Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia
** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia
* Python (mythology), a mythical serpent
Computing
* Python (pro ...
)
Guido Engine
(C++
C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...
library), an
Manufaktura Controls
( .NET libraries). The main purpose of these libraries is to reduce time required for development of software with score rendering capabilities.
Overview of music engraving libraries divided by programming languages
See also
* Rastrum
A rastrum () or raster is a five-pointed writing implement used in music manuscripts to draw parallel staff lines when drawn horizontally across a blank piece of sheet music. The word "raster" is derived from the Latin for "rake". Rastra were ...
References
Further reading
* Elaine Gould. ''Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide to Music Notation'' Faber Music Ltd, London.
* Ted Ross. ''Teach Yourself The Art of Music Engraving & Processing'' Hansen Books, Florida.
* Clinton Roemer. ''The Art of Music Copying: The Preparation of Music for Performance.'' Roerick Music Co., Sherman Oaks, California.
External links
''Musical Engraving on Metal Plates: a Traditional Craft Demonstrated''
(video documentary in German and English)
{{Authority control
Musical notation