When working with house styles and templates, it’s good to realise that the house style settings will be included in the template, but the template’s layout is not included in the house style.

The house style will assign the correct fonts to the title, subtitle etc. and put them on the assigned place in the score if these elements are present in the score, but will not do the actual placing itself, that is what the template is for.

On the other hand, if you would import a house style into any kind of template, all the elements that are used inside this template will be changed according to the settings in the house style.

In this course we have the Sibelius engraving ready, so in fact it’s not necessary the create an empty template, all we need is to adjust the text elements and put them on their correct places after which we can export these settings as a house style. However, for the sake of complement, we will make both house style and template, including Score info and wildcards in the template to let Sibelius insert the title, composer etc. automatically in the score. You can choose not to use Score info and wildcards though and write this information directly in the score.

Creating the template

The template we are going to make has the instrumentation as used in “After work, late at night” for soprano, violin and piano which can be found here:

https://app.box.com/s/t10shewzsb1s2z1d8oe9

Start a new score and click the Change Instrument button to create a score setup as is used in the engraved score. Be sure the instruments are placed in the correct order:

• Solo Soprano, Violin (solo) and Piano. Set the violin to Small staff:

• Click OK to go to the next screen.
• Click Next and leave the House Style to Unchanged.
• Click Next and choose the Time Signature 3/4, write the tempo text Cantabile e affetuosso and Metronome mark quarter note = 62.
• Click Next and choose as Key Signature D major.
• Click Finish, which will give us a score with the instruments as used in the engraved score but without any text. See Sibelius score 1.1 for the result which can be found here: 

https://app.box.com/s/lhko07q5ih9g0spg8rg7

Score info and Wildcards

Instead of typing the title etc. directly into the score, we will use wildcards in combination with the Score info panel. It’s easy to forget something or mistype text, and using wildcards guarantees you that the format of the text in a score will always be the way you or your publisher wants it.

Score Info

Start with filling in the Score info panel: Open File/Score info:

Notice the labels above every field, these are the names of the wildcards which are in fact placeholders that are going to be placed in the score. The text that we type into the above fields will be used to fill these placeholders. So fill these fields with the text you want to see in the score.

Wildcards

The next step is to place the wildcards in the score. As mentioned before, a wildcard is a placeholder that takes the text from the Score Info window. Here are the wildcards for the text used in a score:

Title: \$title\

Part: \$partname\

In the main score, the part name in the Score info window should be “Full score”. Inparts, the part name in the score info window is the instrument name of that part, for example “Clarinet in B^b”

Subtitle: \$Subtitle\

The subtitle is be the instrumentation of the score as for example “for violin and piano”: any other subtitles in a score as for example “from the opera Ghandi”, should be written directly into the score in subtitle text format.

Dedication: \$dedication\

Composer: \$composer\

Arranger: \$arranger\

Lyricist: \$lyricist\

Copyist: \$copyist\

Opus number: \$opusnumber\

Composer’s dates: \$composerdates\

Copyright: \$copyright\

You can also combine wildcards, for example:

C.Saint-Saëns (1835-1921):

\$composer\ (\$composerdates\)

Clarinet in B^b – C.Saint-Saëns – Sonata for Clarinet in B^b and piano

\$partname\ – \$composer\ – \$title\ \$subtitle\

Now all you need to do to let Sibelius place the information from the Score Info window in the score, is to copy and past the wildcards into your score, using the correct text style. This is done in two steps. Let’s take the title as an example.

Title

1. Copy the title wildcard from above (which is \$title\)
2. In Sibelius, from the Create menu, choose Text/Title, click in the score and paste the wildcard.

The title will show up in the score. The text format and position is not correct yet as shown in the list for the publisher, we will change this after we have placed all the wildcards.

Repeat the above steps for the subtitle, dedication, composer, lyricist and Copyright.

In the next step, we will give all the text their correct format and placement in the score.

have a great day!

André