CriticalEd: A tool for assisting with the creation of critical commentaries

The best text method is commonly applied among music scholars engaged in producing critical editions. In this method, a comment list is compiled, consisting of variant readings and editorial emendations. This list is maintained by inserting the comments into a document as the changes are made. Since the comments are not input sequentially, with regard to position, but in arbitrary order, this list must be sorted by copy/pasting the rows into place-an errorprone and time-consuming process. Scholars who produce critical editions typically use off-the-shelf music notation software such as Sibelius or Finale. It was hypothesized that it would be possible to develop a Sibelius plugin, written in Manuscript 6, that would improve the critical editing work flow, but it was found that the capabilities of this scripting language were insufficient. Instead, a 3-part system was designed and built, consisting of a Sibelius plug-in, a cross-platform application, called CriticalEd, and a REST-based solution, which handles data storage/retrieval. A prototype has been tested at the Danish Centre for Music Publication, and the results suggest that the system could greatly improve the efficiency of the critical editing work flow.