History
Sibelius was originally developed by British twins Ben and Jonathan Finn for the Acorn Archimedes computer, under the name 'Sibelius 7'. Development (done on RISC OS entirely in assembly language) was started in 1986, just after the Finns left school, continuing while they were at university. They were music students, and they said they wrote the program because they did not like the laborious process of writing music by hand.
The program was released to the public in April 1993. It ran directly from a 3.5-inch floppy disk, in considerably less than 1MB of memory (Sibelius 7 needed only 548K for a 33-page symphonic score, for example), but the combination of assembly language and Acorn's RISC chip, for which RISC OS was written, meant that it ran very fast. No matter how long the score, changes were displayed virtually instantaneously.
The first ever user of Sibelius was Richard Emsley, who used it prior to its release and provided advice on music-engraving aspects of the software. The first score published using Sibelius was Antara by George Benjamin, published by Faber Music and copied by Emsley. Other early users included composer John Rutter, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and publisher Music Sales.
Sibelius rapidly dominated the UK market, being a killer application for the niche Acorn platform. It also sold in smaller numbers in a few other countries, restricted by the availability of Acorn computers. 'Lite' versions were subsequently released; these were successful in UK schools, where Acorns were widely used.
In September 1998, the first version for Windows was released (now simply called 'Sibelius', and with the version number reset to 1.0). A Mac version was released a few months later. To produce these versions the software was completely rewritten in C++, while retaining most of the original's functionality and user interface with numerous enhancements.
Releasing Sibelius for more widely available computers brought it to a worldwide market, particularly the US, where Sibelius Software had opened an office in late 1996. Following the break-up of Acorn Computers shortly after Sibelius's Windows release, no further Acorn versions were developed.
In August 2006, Sibelius Software Ltd. was acquired by Avid Technology, an American manufacturer of software and hardware for audio and video production. Avid has continued publishing Sibelius as a stand-alone notation product, as well as integrating it with some of its existing software products.
In July 2012, Avid announced plans to divest its consumer businesses (not Sibelius), closed the Sibelius London office in order to move development to Kiev, and laid off some employees. Offshore software R&D company GlobalLogic is searching programmers for a new development team in the Ukraine. Avid has claimed it is still committed to Sibelius.
A Facebook pressure group has been formed to protest against the closure of the London office. A website dedicated to encouraging Avid to sell Sibelius to ensure its continued development is now live.
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