7/25/2016

TheChantCaf:Apracticaltip:UsingSibelius7.5forGregorianChantOrganAccompaniments
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Saturday, June 13, 2015

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A practical tip: Using Sibelius 7.5 for Gregorian Chant Organ

Accompaniments
by Guest Author

[Here's a practical tip submitted by reader Peter Kwasniewski. Thanks! He writes:]

Recently, I had occasion to type up for a friend a set of detailed instructions for using
Sibelius 7.5 to prepare a nicelooking score for an organ accompaniment to an English
plainchant. This information may be either totally beside the point if youre not a
Sibelius user, or totally superfluous if youre already a master of it, but my friend, who
was a rookie, found it helpful, so I wanted to pass along the written instructions.
[A sample score produced by this procedure is available at this link.]
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Among the contributors:

Mary Jane Ballou,
D.S.M., harpist, organist,
director of Cantorae St.
Augustine. specialist in
sacred repertoire for
women's voices | archive
Jennifer Donelson,
D.M.A., associate
managing editor, Sacred
Music, associate
professor at St. Joseph's
Seminary, Dunwoodie
G Hildreth is an
erstwhile Catholic music
director and cantor who
now sings where she
may and blogs at
scelata.blogspot.com | archive
Nathan Knutson,
cathedral and diocesan
director of sacred music,
performing artist,
father, lecturer on
sacred music
Kathleen Pluth, director
of sacred choral music
at St. Joseph Academy,
S.T.D. (cand.) student at
the Angelicum in Rome,
hymn writer and translator |
archive
Fr. Christopher Smith,
S.T.D., pastor of Prince
of Peace Catholic
Church in Taylors, SC |
archive
Mary Ann Carr Wilson, music
director at St. Anne Church in San
Diego, home of the

1) Starting off
a. Launch Sibelius and create a new score: CTRLN
b. Click (once) on Blank

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c. Click on Change instruments

d. Select Organ [manuals], then Add to Score and OK.

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e. Scroll down to Key Signature, select key.

f. Enter title for piece.
g. Click on Create.

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2) Document setup

Enter your em

a. Press CTRLD.
b. Make sure your unit is inches.
c. Enter 0.28 as the Staff size.
d. Select Mirrored for the margins and enter 0.8, 0.6, 1.0, and 0.8 for the
margins, then OK.

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e. To remove bar numbers, go to Text menu, select Numbering, then

select No bar numbers.

3) Creating the framework

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TheChantCaf:Apracticaltip:UsingSibelius7.5forGregorianChantOrganAccompaniments
Diego, home of the
summer Chant Camp.

Adam Wood, church

musician and writer at
Music for Sunday.
Ben Yanke, schola
director and organ
student in Madison, WI
| archive

a. We will use 8th notes as our basic unit, corresponding to the punctum.
Determine how many measures (as defined by full bars, half bars, or
quarter bars) you are going to have in your score and how many 8th notes
will be in each of these measures. If you need more measures, press CTRLB
to generate more. NB: Include one extra measure, for the empty space to
follow after the end of the chant.
b. Enter, for each measure, the needed time signature: ALTC, T, then the
numerator and denominator (e.g., 13/8, 16/8). Point the blue arrow at the
measure that needs the time signature and click.
4) Entering the music

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Acolyte's Tale
Chabanel Psalms
CharlesCole.com
ChoralTracks
Church Music Association of
America
Gotta Sing, Gotta Pray
Gregorian Chant UK
Gregorian Institute of Canada
Hymnography Unbound
Illuminare Publications
Institute of Sacred Music
Optima Musica Dei Donum
Sacred Miscellany
Spode Music Week
Tonus Peregrinus

Gotta have 'em:

a. Drag the keypad into a convenient location.

b. With Voice 1 selected (thats the blue box at the bottom of the keypad),
select the 8th note, and then enter notes, either with the mouse, or using the
letters on the keyboard.
c. When you have entered the entire melody, go back and beam the groups
of notes as you would like them to be. To do this, select a note, then select
the third page of the keypad (it says Beams/tremolos when you hover
the cursor over it), and select the appropriate optione.g., the single note
(No beam when you hover the cursor over it) will isolate a note by giving it
its own flag, while the note with a beam going off to the right only (Start
beam when you hover over it) will connect an isolated note to its neighbor.
d. Now that your melody line looks the way it should, you can enter in the
remaining noteswhich we will call alto, tenor, and bass for convenience.

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e. To enter the alto, make sure all objects are cleared (hit ESC will always do
this), select Voice 2 from the keypad (its the number 2 at the bottom and it
will turn green when clicked), select your note value, and enter the notes in
the treble clef just as you entered the melody.
f. Do the same, in the bass clef, with Voice 1 for the tenor and Voice 2 for the
bass.
g. You wont need Voice 3 or Voice 4 unless you intend to have more than 2
independent voices in either stave. If you ever need a chord in the treble or
bass staff, you can create chords by inputting a note and then piling up
notes on top of it using Arabic numerals (e.g., pressing 3 will place a third
on top of the note, or pressing 5 a fifth).
h. When all the notes have been entered, go back and highlight any note
that needs to be tied to a subsequent note, and notes that need to be tied to
successive notes, and select Tie from the keypad.
i. Highlight all the time signatures and press Delete. This will make them
disappear, although the measures will still retain the right number of 8th
notes.

5) Adding episemas and quilismas

a. To add an episema over one note, highlight the note(s), and from the
keypad, select the tenuto symbol.
b. To add an episema over multiple notes, highlight the first of the notes,
press ALTC, then L, scroll down till you get to the horizontal line, and click
on it. Then, grab the highlighted square on its right side, and drag until the
line is as long as you want it.
c. To add a quilisma, highlight the note over which it is to appear, press Z,
and choose the Inverted mordent.

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6) Formatting barlines

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a. Highlight the full bars and convert them into short bars or ticks, as
needed. To do this, highlight a given bar (or bars), go to the menu
Notations, click on Barline, and select the kind you need.
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Foundation for Sacred Arts

b. Highlight the very last barline and change it to an Invisible barline. If the
program spontaneously creates another bar at the end, just highlight it and
delete it, and you should end up with a final bar without a barline.

Fr. Zuhlsdorf

c. Highlight the secondtolast barline and change it to a Double barline.

Hermeneutic of Continuity

d. To make the final measure wider, click in the middle of the invisible bar,
and, while still holding down the mouse button, drag the mouse rightwards.
This will increase the width of the final measure and decrease the width of
the preceding measure(s). (Of course, dragging the mouse leftwards will do
the opposite.)

New Liturgical Movement

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Rorate Caeli

e. If you want to indent the first system, select the bar line furthest to the
left, and drag with the mouse rightwards.
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f. NB: You can split a bar in the middle by selecting the note where youd like
the split to take place and then choosing, from the Home menu, the Split
option, then click OK.

7) Entering the words

a. Highlight the note where you wish to begin entering text.
b. Go to Text menu, select Lyrics, then Lyrics above staff.
c. You will see a blinking cursor above the note. Begin typing in the text. Use
hyphens to separate syllables and the space bar to skip over notes.
d. To include a mode number at the start of the antiphon, type in the number
and period, then CTRLSPACE, followed by the first syllable of text. (This will
keep the mode number and first syllable together rather than treating the
number as if it was its own syllable.)
e. When you need an asterisk after a syllable, do the same: [syllable], CTRL
SPACE, [asterisk], then SPACE and the rest of the words.
8) Putting in a number for the chant
a. If you need to give the chant a number because its part of a series of
chants, doubleclick the instrument title on the left (Organ) and backspace
to delete the instrument name.
b. Right click with the mouse on any blank spot on the music score. This will
pull up a menu.
c. In the menu, hover the cursor over Text.
d. Move the cursor rightwards, over Other Staff Text.
e. Move the cursor over Plain text and click.
f. The arrow will turn blue. Point it to any blank spot near where you want
the number to appear.
g. Type the number, followed by a period, and press ESC to fix the number in
place.
h. While leaving the number in blue, press CTRLALTSHIFTT to get the
Styles menu.
i. It should already have Plain text highlighted on the list, but if not, scroll
down and select Plain text.
j. Then click on Edit (or press ALTE).
k. There are four boxes with numbers next to Size in score and Size in
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parts. Highlight the upper left of these numbers and change to desired
point size (lets say, 18 point).
l. Then click OK or press ENTER.
m. Then click Close or press ENTER.
n. Using your mouse, move the number wherever you want it on the page.
o. To indent the top system, click on the very barline prior to the clefs and,
while holding the mouse button, drag rightwards.
p. Once you have two systems on the page, youll need to highlight the
abbreviated instrument name (Org.) and simply delete it.

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