Music engraving
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Music engraving is the art of drawing music notation at high quality.
This term originally referred to plate engraving - the traditional process of engraving music directly onto a zinc or pewter plate in mirror image. Fixed symbols, like note heads and clefs, were punched into the metal with dies, and variable symbols, such as beams or slurs, were engraved by hand.
Plate engraving produced high-quality results, but was only one of several competing technologies in use for reproducing music. Others included:
- Moveable type with music symbols on - a centuries-old method, often used for hymn books, but which produced low-quality results
- Music typewriters - like moveable type, this produced low-quality results and was never widely used
- Hand copying with pen and ruler, which if done by an expert copyist can produce high-quality results
- Notaset - dry transfer symbols similar to Letraset
- Brushing ink through stencils, a high-quality technique used by Amersham-based company Halstan & Co.
Because plate engraving was laborious and expensive, it became obsolete around 1990.
The term music engraving is now used to refer to any high-quality method of drawing music notation, particularly on computer ("computer engraving" or "computer setting") or by hand ("hand engraving"). There are numerous computer programs, known as scorewriters, designed for editing and printing music, though only a few produce results of a quality comparable to plate engraving.
The term music copying is almost equivalent, though "music engraving" implies a higher degree of skill and quality.
References
- Ted Ross. Teach Yourself The Art of Music Engraving & Processing Hansen Books, Florida.