Sibelius
More info
- Creator
- Jonathan Finn, Ben Finn
- Released
- 1993
- Owner
- Avid
- Type
- Scorewriter
- License
- Proprietary
The scorewriter that started life on the Acorn Archimedes and became the industry standard for composers and music publishers.
Twin brothers Jonathan and Ben Finn in Cambridge released Sibelius in 1993 for the Acorn Archimedes, an ARM-based machine fast enough to engrave notation in real time while the PC competition was still sluggish. Windows and Mac versions followed in the late 1990s and took on Finale, which had owned the market until then.
Avid, already the owner of Pro Tools, bought the company in 2006. In 2012 Avid closed the London office, and much of the development team was hired by Steinberg, where they built a rival called Dorico. Few companies have funded their own challenger quite so efficiently. Sibelius carries on, now on subscription, and swaps scores with other programs via MusicXML.