I believe strongly that there should be a diversity (as opposed to a mono-
or duoculture) of notation programs and, through I use Finale for most of
my work, have kept a numbers of programs on my computer and keep eye and
ear out for new developments.
At the moment, I take the following programs seriously, some not
neccesarily as complete packages, but at the least as niche products;
unfortunately many program developers are rather shy about supplying score
examples on their webpages (which is precisely why some comparison
benchmarks would be useful):
Free software:
MuseScore, a WYSIWYG program, still in development but at present at least
as useful as the lite versions of Finale, the scores look rather good;
GNU LilyPond, text-based (Denemo provides a rudmentary front-end); not
particularly useful for new music, but rather good for standard classical
repertoire.
Rosegarden (Linux), a workstation, but useful as a front-end to LilyPond
Commercial Software:
Berlioz, the examples I've seen are quite beautiful, reflecting
traditional French engraving styles; the inputting style is very close to
that of a traditional engraver in the first two stages "saisie" and
"decoupage", with only the final "gravure" really unique to the computer;
it's apparently en route to becoming open source which is quite a good
thing.
Capella, apparently has a large user base and it seems capable enough, at
least for amateur and student use, but I haven't been able to get the demo
to work and there are not enough score examples online.
Forte, certainly good enough for intermediate use, has a clear interface
(I particularly like the ruler function, which allows input of notes
directly at their metric position in the measure, filling in rests before
and after).
Graphire Music Press, now no longer in development, but the last version
is available from a third party; this was the "best notation program
you've never heard of", with a great work flow and extreme flexibility in
layout, and it is regretable that it has stalled. This is the product
that would benefit most from an open source release.
Igor Engraver is apparently out of business.
Lime, a perfectly good piece of software for student use, but has some
extra features (i.e. a tuning table, assigning particular pitch bends to
each note + accidental combination; can handle multimetric polyphony) that
other programs do not have and may well be useful to more serious users.
Musedit for amateur use only
Mozart for amateur use only
Notion as part of a very good workstation; have not seen enough examples
to judge the notation capacity.
Harmony Assistant as part of an interesting workstation; the out of the
box notation style is clear and modern in appearance and I believe that
the notation can be significantly modified. The "rules" system is very
powerful, but the program is so rich in capacity (and buttons and
microscopic text) that it can be overwhelming.
Overture, successor to Encore; I haven't seen any score examples.
Score: the current Windows port is apparently so poor that the program is
almost unusable.
Turandot, a nice little program from Hungary, very stable with nice
looking out of the box output (very similar in look to EMB editions),
suitable for standard classical repertoire. Well-suited for students.
However, development stopped at version 1.0 due to legal threats from one
of the major notation programs.
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