In June 2018, Sibelius made the slightly confusing change from the former two levels of Sibelius to a new three-tier model, with some confusion arising from the name changes for the various tiers.
In the previous two-tier system there was the professional-level Sibelius and a cut-down version, Sibelius First. Now there are three levels: the most restrictive version, Sibelius | First; the middle tier, Sibelius; and Sibelius Ultimate, the complete professional edition. Following so far? Good. The most welcome news is that the basic edition, Sibelius | First, is available free of charge.
I feel that the company could cause a lot of confusion by calling the new free edition Sibelius | First, as the pipe does little to differentiate it from the old name of what is now the middle tier. This means that if you search for ‘Sibelius First’ on the web you will now find information relating to the old Sibelius First and the new Sibelius | First. I hope this is all crystal clear now!
Free of charge
There is obviously some good news – now anyone can have a basic edition of Sibelius installed on their computer. The installation of Sibelius is controlled by a single application with the different functions available or disabled depending on the type of licence you have.
As you might expect, the free edition is a heavily cut-down version with scores only allowing up to four staves, notes may only be entered in voices one and two on each stave and there are fewer lines and text styles available. Note values only go from a breve to a demisemiquaver and the engraving rules and document setup options have also been removed. There are no sampled sounds included in Sibelius | First although there is MIDI playback available if you have other sound sources. With these restrictions, Sibelius | First is obviously limited to notating small chamber groups, voice and piano, choral music and lead sheets or similar. However, you could probably get away with scoring an SATB choir and piano by using two voices per stave for soprano and alto and the same for tenor and bass, which would leave two staves free for the piano accompaniment.
Sibelius | First operates in exactly the same manner as the fuller editions so would give any user a basic grounding in the software operation. Despite the restrictions, Sibelius | First could be useful for basic composition and theory work and it is great that it is available free of charge.
This free version can also be operated as a Sibelius Reader. In other words, it will open full Sibelius scores for display and printing but the user will not be able to edit them. I tested this out by installing Sibelius | First on another computer and using it to load some full scores I had created using the full edition of Sibelius. I was able to open a full orchestral score but a message came up saying that because the score was more than four staves I could only view and print the score but not edit. This is useful as it means that you could send a full score to someone and they could view or print it using the free Sibelius | First. It will also open MusicXML files, so if you were using Finale or Dorico you could export files to MusicXML and open them in Sibelius | First to check the layout.
Fierce competition
Music notation is a fairly niche market and there are an increasing number of highly competitive products now available. Finale and Sibelius are well established, although Finale does not seem to be undergoing much active development. Steinberg (with the former Sibelius notation team) has been developing a rival program called Dorico, now at Dorico 2, which threatens to overtake the more established programs. Then there are programs like Notion and Capella, as well as completely free programs like MuseScore. I often wonder if there are sufficient dedicated users to support all the programs available, but I would expect Sibelius to survive because it is so well established.
Ultimate
The middle-tier version, now simply called Sibelius, also has some restrictions but is far more powerful than Sibelius | First. You can write scores with up to 16 staves and it includes a 10GB high-quality Sibelius Sounds library. This edition is fine for the keen amateur and student but it lacks the flexibility of the full edition in formatting and advanced layout procedures one might need for publication requirements. Sibelius Ultimate has all these extra layout options as well as a 36GB professional-quality sound library, and you can of course create full scores for the largest orchestras or bands without restriction.
Conclusions
The new free version of the software is welcome, despite its restrictions, because it is good to have a completely free taster of Sibelius available to all, especially when used as a Sibelius Reader. Serious composers and arrangers will still need the facilities of the full version, now a very well established and mature program. It is good for composers that high-quality rival software is being rapidly developed, increasing options and driving standards higher – the options for high-quality notation output and score-writing have never been stronger.
Price: FREE (speak to your dealer for education pricing on Sibelius and Sibelius Ultimate)
