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New in Mozart 14

Mozart 14 was released in April 2018.

It introduced the following new features.

 

 

Resolution

Mozart's horizontal resolution for note positioning has been refined.  This allows considerably more flexibility in formatting music, just one example of which is embodied in the spacing of short notes.

Semiquavers

Auto spacing

Mozart's automatic spacing as you enter and reformat music has now been vastly improved. The onus is no longer on the user to space each individual note correctly, but now Mozart does it automatically with note spacing based on published recommendations*.

spacing

The density of spacing is maintained automatically across each line on the page.

This feature is completely transparent, but in fact constitutes the biggest development in Mozart for some time: it makes writing professionably presentable music very straightforward indeed!
 

Note spacing - global override

You can subtly adjust the global note-spacing for a piece, demanding denser or sparser music spacing.  For example:

90% spacing
standard spacing
110% spacing 90

Note spacing - local override

Spacing between individual notes and bar lines can be modified, but our objective is to make this necessary as rarely as possible.

One occasion where this may be desirable is to make room for annotations on the stave - for example:

Annotations

Note spacing on justification

Music is, as previously, automatically justified to bring the final bar-line on each line to the end of the staff. This means that music on some lines can be denser or sparser than on others, but the music density is constant along each line, as required by published recommendations*.

The 'stretching' needed to do this is now performable in a smarter way, with improved spacing of some note groups.

unjustified justified

Note spacing on entering music

Mozart maintains its optimum note spacing as you enter music.

autospace

Caret movement options

Horizontal movement of the caret with the arrow keys is now more flexible. There are three options:

fineFine:On each key press the caret moves by 1/8 of a note width;
coarseCoarse:On each key press the caret moves by 1 note width;
quickQuick:The caret moves from an item, halfway to the next, or from between items to the next item.

 

With the automatic note spacing, the 'Quick' option is particularly useful.

Split inner beams

Large groups of very short notes are now created with split inner beams, with the pattern recommended in the literature.*

Demisemiquavers
Hemidemisemiquavers

(The default patterns are overridable.)

Arpeggiated chords

Arpeggiated chords can now be drawn with or without an arrow head on the arpeggiation symbol.

 

Arpeggiation

Rendering of hairpins

The rendering of 'hairpins' across line breaks is improved.*

Hairpin

(The open end at the start of the second line indicates a continuation.)

Keyboard Interface

 

All of Mozart's traditional standard keyboard shortcuts have been retained. Mozartists can type music just as you always did!

 

'Alt' chords

Altered chords containing chromatic 9ths and 5ths may now simply be labelled 'Alt'

 

Alt

This can be ambiguously applied to a number of chords, but Mozart remembers the actual notes for play-back.

Chord name format

Chord names may be formatted in-line:

in line

or with the chord type as a superscript:

superscript

 

Chord names

Mozart's ability to handle German chord names (where B becomes H) is now extended to include options of French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, where note names C D E F G A B become variations on Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si.  An example in French:

French

Undo

The Undo command (Ctrl+Z) now undoes only a single operation. This makes all previous states of the music re-obtainable. There are more 'levels of undo' than you will ever need.

[In the early days of Mozart, back in 1994, this would have run up against the then limits of computer memory.  Therefore a 'smart' version of undo was devised which undid consecutive sequences of similar commands.  With the rapid expansion of memory in recent years, this constraint has ceased to apply, and so the new, less smart, but more powerful, brute force 'undo-each-command-one-at-a-time' method is long overdue.]

Paste

The Paste operation (Ctrl+V) no longer requires the target bars to be empty of music.  It just overwrites existing music.

 

If, heaven forfend, you make a mistake, the new, more powerful Undo command will get you out of it!

Pasting lyric lines

Lyric lines can now be pasted under existing notes with a form of  "Paste Special"  command.

paste lyric line

This can overwrite existing lyric sylables but the command is easily undone with Ctrl+Z.

The text to be pasted can be put on the clipboard by copying a passage from a Mozart piece with lyrics, or by copying from a text application.

Deleting lyric sylables

Lyric syllables may now be deleted en masse from a lyric line leaving the notes to which they're attached unchanged.

delete lyrics

Thus for example, text from one or more lyric lines can be removed from a section of a piece, quickly and efficiently!

Again, any mistakes are readily undone with Ctrl+Z

Right justification

Right justification of the music may now be suspended on individual lines - eg so that a short last line of a movement is not stretched across the page:

Unjustified

Tempo changes

Tempo changes no longer have to occur between notes

Tempo

Correct play-back is arranged by an (invisible) conductor.

Accidental placement

The accidental placement for complex chords has been improved, consistent with guidelines in the literature*.

In "simple" cases there should be little change, but here's a more complicated example:

accidentals

Trills, tremoli, reiterations

Trills, tremoli, and notes with strokes through the tail, now, when they are under a crescendo or dimenuendo, respect the changing dynamic on play-back.

trills

A trill 'squiggle' now correctly* extends to the duration of the note.

Go to Rehearsal Mark

 

goto

A 'go to rehearsal mark command' provides a new companion to the old 'go to bar' command.

Flash drive

Distribution

As CD-drives are going the way of dinosaurs and floppy disks, the Mozart installer is now supplied either as a download or on a USB flash drive.

*Reference

Behind bars

In 2011 Faber Music published "Behind Bars" (subtitled "The Definitive Guide To Music Notation") by Elaine Gould.

Even Simon Rattle's glowing preface ("...this wonderful monster volume...") doesn't do it full justice.  It is technical, yes, authoritative, certainly, but also very well written and eminently readable.  Quite an achievement.  It's a useful book for anyone writing down music, but an essential one for those of us writing software to do it.

When it came out, we were happy to see that much of what Mozart had already adopted as best practice concurred with Elaine's recommendations - that'll be a gold star for us then.  But in some cases, what Elaine proposed would be an improvement on Mozart, and we have been striving to make those improvements.  Mozart 14 continues this effort.  And in developing new features for Mozart - like its automatic note spacing - we have taken Elaine's recommendations to heart.

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