Sibelius and Narnia – The Story Begins

“Sibelius was absolutely vital for Narnia”, says multi-award winning composer of the Disney blockbuster score Harry Gregson–Williams, recently nominated for a Golden Globe for the soundtrack.

The score for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe was composed entirely within the Sibelius environment and both Harry Gregson–Williams and his assistant, Stephen Barton, are fulsome in their praise for the new features in SIBELIUS 4 and the role that the program overall played in contributing to the efficient creation of the score.

Harry Gregson-Williams, currently working on Shrek 3 and whose previous score credits include Shrek 2, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, Father of the Bride and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, is a committed and enthusiastic professional SIBELIUS user and comments: 

“Sibelius 4 rocks! The whole Dynamic Parts function make our lives ridiculously easy and gives us even more flexibility under pressure, as we can quickly change things and know exactly what parts to print out without having to make edits to every one. It’s become feasible in a ten minute break to, say, completely alter a violin part and be able to get 20 parts revised and back on to the stand, and a new score onto the podium and into the booth quickly.  It’s amazing and a godsend for us.”

Sibelius 4 is becoming an ever-increasing and essential part of the music production process for composers, copyists and orchestrators in the high-pressure international movie world. New features of the latest version include the ability to compose to video on screen – the first ever music notation program to allow this. Users can add any video files to a score, which is then displayed on the screen in a video window and plays in sync with the music. Hit points can easily be added to mark important visual events in the score providing a no-hassle method of making the music fit the action.

The revolutionary new Dynamic Parts feature, so highly praised by the Narnia score creators, allows users to quickly produce separate instrumental parts and whenever revisions are made to the full score the program will automatically update ALL the relevant parts – vital for orchestral and large band arrangements . Alternatively individual parts can be edited whilst the full score changes to match. The benefit to world-renowned movie soundtrack composers like Gregson-Williams is that these features save composers vital hours in a high-speed environment. The complimentary Auto Layout feature also ensures that all parts are beautifully laid out on the page ready to print and play!

In addition to The Chronicles of Narnia, Sibelius has most recently been used to prepare the music for the latest Harry Potter film The Goblet of Fire and the hit TV series Lost.

Surely – if there were Oscars for the creative tools of the trade as well as the creators, SIBELIUS 4 would scoop the most nominations!

Notes to editors

• Sibelius is the world’s market leader in music notation software.
• Sibelius was founded in 1993 by Ben and Jonathan Finn to sell music notation software for the Acorn computer. The Sibelius notation software was released for Windows and Mac in 1998/99.
• Since then the Sibelius Group has developed 20 additional music products for the professional, educational and home user, ranging from Internet publishing to guitar software.
• Sibelius has customers in over 100 countries.
• Sibelius is used in 60% of schools in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
• Sibelius is endorsed by the Royal Academy of Music and is used by all the major music academies and colleges: the Royal College of Music, Trinity College of Music, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, the Juilliard School, Berklee School of Music, the Sibelius Academy in Finland, the Royal College of Music in Stockholm
• The world’s leading music publishers including Music Sales, Hal Leonard and Yamaha use Sibelius
• Sibelius was recently awarded a prestigious Queen’s Award for Innovation.
• Sibelius is headquartered in London, UK, with a US subsidiary, Sibelius USA Inc., in California and an Australian subsidiary, Sibelius Australia Pty Ltd, in Adelaide.