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lilypond-essay: Engraving details

 
 1.2 Engraving details
 =====================
 
 The art of music typography is called _(plate) engraving_, a term that
 derives from the manual process of music printing(1).  Just a few
 decades ago, sheet music was made by cutting and stamping the music into
 a zinc or pewter plate in mirror image.  The plate would be inked, and
 the depressions caused by the cutting and stamping would hold ink.  An
 image was formed by pressing paper to the plate.  The stamping and
 cutting was done completely by hand and making a correction was
 cumbersome, so the engraving had to be nearly perfect in one go.
 Engraving was a highly specialized skill; a craftsman had to complete
 around five years of training before earning the title of master
 engraver, and another five years of experience were necessary to become
 truly skilled.
 
 [jpg]
    LilyPond is inspired by traditional manual engravings published by
 European music publishers in and towards the end of the first half of
 the twentieth century, including Bärenreiter, Duhem, Durand, Hofmeister,
 Peters, and Schott.  This is sometimes regarded as the peak of
 traditional musical engraving practice.  As we have studied these
 editions we have learned a great deal about what goes into a
 well-engraved score, and the aspects that we wanted to imitate in
 LilyPond.

Menu

 
· Music fonts
· Optical spacing
· Ledger lines
· Optical sizing
· Why work so hard?
 
    ---------- Footnotes ----------
 
    (1) Early European printers explored several processes, including
 hand-carved wooden blocks, movable type, and engraved sheets of thin
 metal.  Typesetting had the advantage of being more easily corrected and
 facilitating the inclusion of text and lyrics, but only engraving
 offered the ability to do unimpeded layout and unanticipated notation.
 In the end, hand-engraved scores became the standard for all printed
 music, with the exception of some hymnals and songbooks where
 typesetting was justified by its ease and economy, even into the
 twentieth century.
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