scorewriter

A scorewriter, or music notation program is software for creating, editing and printing sheet music. A scorewriter is to music notation what a word processor is to text, in that they typically provide flexible editing and automatic layout, and produce high-quality printed results.

The first modern score manipulation program was Mockingbird, written by John Maxwell and Severo Ornstein at Xerox PARC in 1980 on a Dorado computer. It preceded MIDI so an electronic keyboard had to be modified to enable interaction (input and playback) with the program. The WYSIWYG program was envisioned as a composer's amanuensis, but as it was an experimental program it never reached beyond PARC, though it influenced commercial programs which soon followed.