How to engrave an Opera (in Sibelius) – Ep. 3

Episode 3 – First Steps (cont’d)

Instruments set-up (Part 2)

Percussion

In an ideal world, you will know beforehand how many instruments and players your opera will need, but let’s be realistic: when will that happen? Let’s once more play safe by respecting one single rule: the timpanist is not a percussionist! That is, give the Timpani their own stave—I suggest without key signature—and set up a 5-line stave for each extra percussionist. The timpanist may help with playing also some other instruments, but they require their own stave.

Once this is settled, I recommend creating a single “Percussion (5-line)” instrument with as many extra staves as there are extra players. Try to achieve this kind of setup:

Brasses

Woodwinds and brasses require specific care because of how many combinations of instruments there may be, also considering all doubling possibilities. We will start from brasses as it is, somehow, more straightforward. These rules will also apply to any big symphonic work.

Brass instruments are usually grouped as follows, from top to bottom: horns, trumpets, trombones, and tubas. According to register, horns should go between trumpets & trombones, but this is such an old convention that there is no point in changing it now. Nowadays, horns are French Horns in F, and you should use the version of the instrument labelled “Horn in F [no key]”, thus ensuring that every accidental will be written out in front of each relevant note. Horns can be anything between 2 and 8 in a given piece, with the standard being 2 or 4.

The new hiding feature introduced in Sibelius 2023.5 is very young and few professionals around have been using it actively, knowing perfectly well what kind of issues may have arisen from adopting it. I therefore suggest you stick to something that is proven to work. I will use a four-horn setup for my example, even if the opera I engraved had three of them.

DISCLAIMER: feel free not to add any of the following combinations of staves if you are 100% sure you won’t need them. This tutorial’s goal is to get you covered for all possible outcomes, but only you can know what you require in your piece!

First, add four single “Horn in F [no key]” to the score and change their name to something sensible, such as “Horn 1\n\(F)” for the full name and “Hn. 1\n\(F)” for the short name. This will ensure that you have all the music material for your parts ready to go. Condensing will be done pseudo-manually by using the Explode or Reduce plug-ins (making sure you do that before starting to hide staves).

Now, create a new “Horn in F [no key]” instrument, but give it a total of 14 staves (1 + 13 extra). Edit each Staff name to reflect all the possible combinations of these four instruments: 1.2.3, 1.2.4, 1.3.4, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1, 2, 2.3.4., 2.3, 2.4, 3, 3.4, 4 (this order is important!). Why are we doing this? While you will be mostly using the 1.2 and 3.4 staves, there are moments when you need a single “Horn” instrument label, and different divisions (try to think of any symphonic poem of Richard Strauss and its string divisions!). Maybe you have Horns 1 & 4 playing something in unison, or homoryhthmically, and Horns 2 & 3 playing some solo lines. Having three staves each labelled “Horn” plus a number needlessly clutters the score and makes the conductor’s life harder. Besides, composers can write directly on these staves, and then the engraver can use the Explode plug-in to move the material to each single stave. I agree that this is an overkill preparation, so feel free to remove any staves you know you will not need or, better, create them only when you know you will need them. Regardless, I prefer to have all options in front of me before I start.

We are not over yet, though: sometimes you have all four horns together, or you have three of them and nothing else. While you may use one of the staves we just created, the staff label will be badly aligned to other single instruments and look pretty messy. I suggest you create enough extra staves for when a specific combination of horns will play alone, e.g., “Horns 1.2” or “Horns 2.3”. For four instruments, a total of 11 combinations will be needed: 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 2.3, 2.4, 3.4, 1.2.3, 1.2.4, 1.3.4, 2.3.4, 1.2.3.4. Once you have created this, select all the horn staves and go to Notations > Bracket or Brace > and hit Sub-bracket. This will keep all your instruments grouped together in the full score.

As always, I strongly recommend you compose in Panorama View, making heavy usage of the Focus on Staves features, possibly creating as many as 10 Focus Sets using the dedicated plug-in.

Now that we have the Horns set up, we need to repeat the same process for Trumpets, Trombones, and Tubas. I will not repeat all what written before, just the principles:

1. Create separate staves for each instrument
2. Create a single instrument with as many staves as there are possible combinations
3. Create separate staves for every possible combination to be used alone when needed

For Trumpets, they can nowadays be in B-flat or C, so I will let the choice up to you. There are usually two of them in the orchestra, the second possibly doubling Flügelhorn. In this case, never use condensed staves (point 3) nor the single instrument one (point 2) when the two instruments are not the same. Always use the two separate staves (point 1). With only two trumpets there are four possible combinations (luckily!): Trumpet 1, Trumpet 2, Trumpet with two staves, Trumpet 1.2.

Coming to Trombones, there are typically three in the orchestra, two Tenor Trombones and a Bass Trombone, this last one often condensed with the only Tuba in the orchestra. The two Tenor Trombones are set up to read in Tenor clef, but can be set up in Bass clef as well, while the Bass Trombone uses Bass clef only. For this setup, you need a total of ten staves: three for the single trombones, one instrument with six staves (1.2, 1.3, 1, 2, 2.3, 3), five extra combinatory staves (1.2, 1.3, 2.3, 1.2.3, 3+Tuba), and a single Tuba stave.

Woodwinds

The same procedure applies here, with a few important cautions. When a flutist doubles as Piccolo, it is a good convention (though not universal) to show the Piccolo as the top instrument. Simply allocate a separate stave for that, on which you will duplicate the music when needed¹. The first woodwind of each section rarely doubles, so assign extra instruments to the second (or third) one of each family. In any case, our empty score will begin with the base instrument and use Instrument changes as needed.

For flutes, we require five total instruments, in this order from top to bottom: Piccolo, Flute 1, Flute 2, Flute (with two staves), Flute 1.2.

For oboes, the same setup as trumpets applies: Oboe 1, Oboe 2, Oboe (2 staves), Oboe 1.2. The same goes for Clarinets & Bassoons, you know the drill by now!

Bottom Line

We’re seeing the light at the end of this tunnel! In the next episode, we will take care of singers’ staves, and of a few extra auxiliary staves that may become useful. Stay tuned for the upcoming Episode 4, and thank you for reading so far!

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See you in the next episode!

Michele

1. I so wish that the dynamic guitar staves were expanded to allow us to connect any stave together, instead of this new, disruptive, hiding feature. ↩