One of my sidelines over the past decade or so has been the engraving of music. This is essentially music typesetting, that is: taking handwritten music and turning it into professional, printed music. I’ve specialized in so-called “new music”, a very inadequate term referring to new compositions out of a classical tradition.

As a result, I’ve had the chance to see some very freaky music and turn it into beautiful printed music. Engraving music is much more complex than simple layout. I see it as an art behind the art of music. The object of engraving is to create music that “leaps off the page”. A well-prepared piece of music translates itself easily from the squiggles and squoggles on the page to the performance of the music, with a minimum of conscious mediation by the musician. Put another way, a well-prepared score doesn’t struggle with the performer, but is as clear a “set of instructions” for the creation of a performance as is possible. The desired result is that the performer(s) can concentrate their efforts on musicality, not trivia.

(This is not unlike the role of a cinema projectionist. When projectionists do their jobs well, you don’t notice them.)

Over the years I’ve become very adept at engraving, especially with a program called Finale, which you may know as the industry standard package for computer engraving.