SCORE (software)

SCORE (software)

SCORE is a scorewriter program, written in FORTRAN for DOS by Professor Leland Smith. It has a reputation for producing very high-quality results, though considered by some people somewhat difficult to learn. It was widely used in engraving during the 1980s and 1990s, although it still has not appeared in a Windows version. It continues to have a small, dedicated following of quality engravers, many of whom regard it as the world's best music-engraving program. Many publications that have earned Paul Revere and German Musikpresse engraving awards are produced with SCORE. SCORE is known for its ability to precisely position symbols on the page, and also allows the user complete control over every aspect of their music through making every possible aspect of music notation manually controllable (this, however, also leads to some difficulty or frustration of use in the program).

The program is more suited to precision engraving of completed music than for composition, where frequent rearranging of notes or insertion or deletion of passages may cause difficulties in SCORE.