Frescobaldi is a free and open source LilyPond sheet music text editor.
Frescobaldi is a LilyPond sheet music text editor designed to streamline the creation and editing of musical scores. Offering syntax highlighting, automatic completion, a two-way Point & Click music view, and an integrated MIDI player for proof-listening, Frescobaldi provides powerful tools for music composition. Ideal for composers, arrangers, and musicians working with LilyPond, it enhances productivity by simplifying complex tasks. Available for installation via winget on Windows, Frescobaldi is a free and open-source solution that supports various operating systems.
Frescobaldi is a LilyPond sheet music text editor. It aims to be powerful, yet
lightweight and easy to use. Frescobaldi is Free Software, freely available
under the General Public License.
Features:
Powerful text editor with syntax highlighting and automatic completion
Music view with advanced two-way Point & Click
Midi player to proof-listen LilyPond-generated MIDI files
Midi capturing to enter music
Powerful Score Wizard to quickly setup a music score
Snippet Manager to store and apply text snippets, templates or scripts
Use multiple versions of LilyPond, automatically selects the correct version
Built-in LilyPond documentation browser and built-in help
Configurable document outline view to navigate large LilyPond scores easily
Smart layout-control functions like coloring specific objects in the PDF
Import ABC, Midi and MusicXML using the LilyPond-provided tools
Experimental export to MusicXML
Modern user interface with configurable colors, fonts and keyboard shortcuts
Translated into: Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Swedish, Czech,
Russian, Spanish, Galician, Turkish, Polish, Brazilian, Ukrainian,
Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
Music functions:
Transpose music
Change music from relative to absolute and vice versa
Change the language used for note names
Change the rhythm (double, halve, add/remove dots, copy, paste) etc
Hyphenate lyrics using word-processor hyphenation dictionaries
Add spanners, dynamics, articulation easily using the Quick Insert panel
Update LilyPond syntax using convert-ly, with display of differences
Frescobaldi is designed to run on all major operating systems (Linux, macOS
and Windows). It is named after Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643), an Italian
composer of keyboard music in the late Renaissance and early Baroque period.
Here is an idea of the basic Frescobaldi workflow:
Start Frescobaldi
Open a .ly file or create one using File->New from template or
Tools->Setup new Score... and fill in some music
Press Ctrl+M to run LilyPond
If the LilyPond output shows errors, press Ctrl+E to jump to the first error
If you see other mistakes in the music, click the notes to move the text
cursor there
When a piece is finished, press Ctrl+Shift+P once to run LilyPond with point
and click turned off (this results in a much smaller PDF file).
Frescobaldi is written in Python and uses PyQt for its user interface.
Installation instructions for the program and MIDI support as well as other
information can be found in the Wiki.
Other requirements and installation instructions may also be found in the
INSTALL.md file.