Sibelius is a scorewriter program. Named after the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, it was created by a specialist company Sibelius Software Ltd which was founded by British twins Ben and Jonathan Finn, and first launched (under the name Sibelius 7) on the Acorn Archimedes computer in 1993. Since then, it has grown to become the world's most widely-used scorewriting package, currently in version 3 (for Microsoft Windows and Mac).
Cut-down versions of Sibelius have also been released for Acorn computers (Sibelius 7 Student, Sibelius 6 and Junior Sibelius), and more recently for Windows and Mac (Sibelius Student).
The launch of Sibelius significantly heated up the 'home and professional scorewriter' market, previously dominated (particularly in the USA) by Finale.
Sibelius has also made inroads into the online music publishing market with its free score reader and web browserplugin, Scorch, allowing publishers and individual users of Sibelius to securely publish their music on the internet. Printed music can be scanned into Sibelius using a separate program called PhotoScore, and music can be played back at high quality and burned to CD using the optional program Kontakt Player Gold.
Popular belief has it that the name 'Sibelius' was a pun on the inventors' surname of 'Finn'. However, the inventors maintain that while this may have been the reason, they can't really remember.
The program plays a brief passage from one of Jean Sibelius' symphonies when it is started up (which symphony is quoted depends on the version of the software).
They range from programs which can write a simple song, piano piece or guitar tab, to those that can handle the complexities of orchestral music, specialist notations (from early music to avant garde), and high-quality music engraving.
Due to the wide variation in features and notations supported, and because scorewriterprograms have only entered into widespread use relatively recently, scores created using one program tend to be incompatible with programs developed by other manufacturers.
Sibelius 4 is capable of opening Finale's.MUS files as well as its ENIGMA Transportable Files (.ETF).
The slightly less comprehensive Sibelius is still quite capable and the easiest to use in its class.
With Sibelius, you don't scroll through the score at all; rather, you click within the Navigator window (a miniature overview of the score) to go directly to a section of the score.
Sibelius automates a number of tasks that you have to perform manually in Finale–but this automation sometimes limits your control of the score.
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