Serenissima Press

Open Serenissima Press · version 1.8.3 · Release notes · Feedback

Turn a MusicXML score of Renaissance polyphony into partbooks (one voice per book) or a choirbook (voices spread across facing pages), in mensural notation with text underlay, set in the EMS Serenissima font.

About

Singers of Renaissance music almost always sing from modern editions: barlines, modern clefs, notes and rests as they are written today. The music was first sung from something quite different. Each singer read only their own part, in white mensural notation, from a partbook or from a large choirbook shared by the whole choir. Learning to read from that notation changes how the music feels: no bars, long phrases, and the text placed by the singer.

Serenissima Press makes such books from the editions people already have. You give it a MusicXML file exported from Finale, Sibelius, MuseScore or Dorico, or downloaded from a site such as CPDL. It sets each voice in mensural notation, in the style of a Renaissance print, ready to print or save as a PDF.

• For ensembles and teachers: reading copies for workshops and rehearsals, so singers can learn the notation on music they already know.
• Period or comfortable: period clefs as a scribe would have chosen them, or modern clefs while singers learn the shapes of the notes.
• Private: everything runs in your browser and the score never leaves your computer.

The result is a good starting point: check ties, perfection, ficta and text underlay against your source.

Using it

1. Open the site and choose one or more .musicxml, .xml or .mxl files (one voice per part, lyrics included). Each file is a piece of the book; add more at any time and put them in order.
2. Pick Partbook or Choirbook, page size, orientation (portrait or landscape) and margins, labels and clefs.
3. Check Note values: editions in x/2 time usually keep the original values (whole note = semibreve); editions in x/4 usually halve them (half note = semibreve). The tool guesses; check it.
4. Print / save as PDF: choose "Save as PDF" and margins "None".

The settings are in groups you can open and close; the editor can be light, dark or follow your system (the pages always stay paper-coloured, as they will print).

A link like index.html?score=examples/o-quam-gloriosum.mxl&format=choirbook opens a score directly; repeat score= to open several.

What it does

• Notes and rests: notes become mensural values (maxima to semifusa); ties merge, triplets become coloration, dotted notes get a dot of addition, and 3-semibreve breves under O are perfect.
• Accidentals: worked out from pitch against the key signature; editorial accidentals (ficta) are left out unless you ask for them. Mensural notation has no sharp key signatures, so sharps are printed on their notes; transposing can help.
• Lines: each line has a clef, signature and custos; staves are justified to full width.
• Initials: in a choirbook, a large decorated initial opens the voice at the top left and smaller ones open the other voices and any sections set to start a new page (plain capitals by default, optionally in red). Each voice has only one initial on a page, at the start of its space, so that each singer can find their part: a later section set to start a new line begins with its words whole. Optionally, as in the Alamire workshop's choirbooks, the lower voices open with the first letter of their name instead of the text's (a T for the Tenor, "enor" written beside it). In partbooks each voice opens with the large one. Styles: roman alphabets (the 1592 woodcut, EB Garamond Initials after Berner's specimen, with only A D F G L N O Q T, other letters coming from the foliated woodcut; a foliated woodcut; roman with leaves; roman with construction lines, after Tory and Dürer), gothic alphabets (decorated, Yinit; a gothic woodcut; flourished gothic; cadels after Rossi, 1598, and after Franck, 1601, traced from the writing books: Rossi's have no K or W, and Franck's stand in for them, with a notice), plain capital, blank frame, your own image, or none.
• Text type: roman (EB Garamond), or gothic (Rotunda Pommerania), the rounded blackletter of the earliest music prints and of Spanish and German books. In gothic the text is set as the printers set it: long s within a word and round s at its end, the founts' ligatures (ch, ck, ff, fi, fl, ll, ſſ, ſt, tt …), voice names in lower case (Cantus, not CANTVS), and no spaced capitals, small capitals or italics. The font has no accented vowels, so accents are dropped.
• Clefs: the font reaches one ledger line above and below the staff. With period clefs (the default), a part that goes further in the edition's clef gets the clef a scribe would have used: a common one (C1, C3, C4, F4, then G2, C2, F3) that keeps every note within reach. This is listed as a note, not a warning. Modern clefs, for singers learning the notation, set sopranos and altos in treble, tenors in treble an octave lower and basses in F4. A note past the font's reach is drawn from the font's own note, with only the extra ledger lines it needs, copied from the font's first one (the option can be turned off).
• Printed or manuscript: a book is either or . A printed choirbook follows Dorico (Rome) and Moderne (Lyon), a printed partbook the Venetian and Parisian presses (Gardano, Scotto, Le Roy & Ballard); a manuscript choirbook follows the Alamire workshop. The style sets the type (roman or gothic), the initials (woodcut, or flourished gothic in red), the numbering (arabic, or lower-case roman), the ruling (blank, or ruled pages) and a choirbook's staff (see below); each can still be changed, and each format and style keeps its own choices. A printed book is black and white; a manuscript may have its initials (and a choirbook its "Residuum") in red. Printed is the default.

Not yet

Mensural ligatures, perfection and alteration beyond simple cases, signatures (gathering marks), OMR.

Feedback

Found something wrong, or have an idea? Use Feedback at the top of the site, which opens a short form (no account needed). "Report a problem with this score", under the preview, fills in the version and your settings for you. If you can share the score, add a link to it (Google Drive, Dropbox, CPDL, …).

If you have a GitHub account you can also open an issue; attach the score there, renamed from .mxl to .zip, as GitHub doesn't accept .mxl files.

Release notes

Versions are numbered major.feature.fix: a release with new features raises the middle number, a release of fixes only raises the last. Before 1.0.0 the tool was in beta, numbered 0.feature.fix.

1.8.3 (2026-10-30)

• Evenly spaced voices in choirbooks. Where the voices on a page have as many staves each, the space between them is now the same: each starts exactly its share of the way down the page, instead of at the nearest whole staff, which could leave two staves' space above one voice and one above the next. On a page whose empty staves are ruled, the voices keep to the ruling, with the same number of empty staves between each.

1.8.2 (2026-10-30)

• The playback bar out of the way. It now sits at the foot of the window instead of over the tops of the pages, and is slimmer: the voices to play are in a pop-up behind a Voices button, which counts any you've silenced. The arrow at its end shrinks it to just the play button (remembered in this browser). While playing, the view keeps the notes clear of it.

1.8.1 (2026-10-30)

• Playback with several pieces. Pieces often share voice names (each has its Cantus and Bassus), and the playback bar ran them all together. Now, with more than one piece, it has a row of voices for each piece, under the piece's number and title. Silencing a voice silences it in that piece only, and each piece's voices are spread across the stereo field among themselves.

1.8.0 (2026-10-30)

• Surface and aged ink. Under Book, Surface sets the pages on rag paper, as the printed books, or on vellum, as the manuscripts, on screen and in print. Aged ink turns the ink brown (iron-gall, in a manuscript) or a warm black (in print), a little uneven from note to note, with its edges roughened on screen. Print keeps the music sharp and the PDF small; turn off Print the surface and ink for clean rehearsal copies. Saved with the project.

1.7.0 (2026-10-30)

• A new look for the editor. A slimmer header, with one button to switch between the system's theme, light and dark. The settings have switches instead of checkboxes and larger fields, and the longer explanations fold to their first line (click one to read it all). Print and Save project stay at the foot of the settings, and the playback bar floats over the book, with a chip for each voice to silence or bring back. Before a score is open, the preview says what the tool does and offers the sample. The pages themselves, and what prints, are unchanged.

1.6.0 (2026-10-28)

• Voice-name initials in choirbooks. As in the Alamire workshop's choirbooks (Brussels MS 9126, Jena Chorbuch 7), the lower voices can begin with the first letter of their name instead of the text's: a decorated T for the Tenor, a B for the Bassus, with the rest of the name written beside it (in red if your initials are) and the words starting in full on the staff. The first voice keeps the text's initial. Turn it on under Initials with "Start each lower voice with its name's letter".

1.5.1 (2026-10-25)

• Playback follows along. The playing bar now stays pinned to the top of the window as you scroll. The view keeps the note being played in sight, note by note rather than page by page, and stays with one voice (the one you clicked, in partbooks) instead of jumping between books. Scroll by hand while it plays and it leaves you alone for a few seconds before catching up.

1.5.0 (2026-10-25)

• Colophon. Books can end as the printed ones did: "Finis", the printer's device (a fleuron, a leaf, or your own image), and the colophon's lines naming the city, the printer and the year, with the year written the period way if you like (1544 becomes M. D. XLIIII.). Each partbook ends with it, at the foot of its last page or of the index if there's room; a choirbook has it after the index, never over the ruled staves. It's saved with the project.

1.4.0 (2026-10-25)

• Playback, to proofread by ear. A bar above the preview plays the book in the browser, lighting each note in red as it sounds and following it from page to page. Set the tactus in semibreves a minute, untick a voice to silence it, click any note to play from there, or press the space bar to play and pause. It plays the edition's pitches and note values, through every piece in the book.

1.3.0 (2026-10-25)

• New initial alphabets. Roman: a foliated woodcut, roman with leaves, and roman with construction lines after Tory and Dürer. Gothic: a gothic woodcut and flourished gothic (Dieter Steffmann's designs), and two sets of cadels traced from the writing books, after Marco Antonio Rossi (1598) and Paul Franck (1601). Both menus are now grouped into Roman, Gothic and Other.
• Rossi's cadels have no K or W. Franck's stand in for them, and a notice says so.
• No more letters on a dotted ground. The 1592 woodcut's missing letters now come from the foliated woodcut, and printing no longer needs "Background graphics". Projects that used the dotted style open with the foliated woodcut.

1.2.0 (2026-10-25)

• Note spacing, in either style: five settings from very close to wide replace the manuscript style's on/off switch. Closer spacing fits more music on a page, so a piece can stay on one opening without a smaller staff. The manuscript style starts at Close, the printed style at As in printed books; projects saved with the old switch open at the matching setting.
• One mensuration sign where the mensuration doesn't change: an edition that changes its time signature every few bars (4/4, 2/4, 3/4…) no longer gets a C at each change. A sign is printed where it changes, and restated where a section begins.

1.1.0 (2026-10-22)

• Notes close together in a manuscript: as the Alamire scribes wrote, the notes of a manuscript-style book stand close, a melisma's almost touching, and the words are fitted under them; a note moves on only to keep its syllable clear of the one before. An option of the manuscript style, on by default and shown only there.
• "Residuum" as the scribes wrote it: the indent no wider than the word, the word close against the staves and drawn out down those beside it.
• Partbooks start as an oblong quarto (Quarto, Landscape), as the Venetian partbooks were.

1.0.1 (2026-10-22)

• "Residuum" kept clear of the staves: where a voice goes on for only one staff in a manuscript choirbook, the word is written smaller to fit beside it, instead of running into the section, clef or ruled staves below.

1.0.0 (2026-10-21)

• Out of beta. The partbooks and choirbooks, the printed and manuscript styles, the check that the voices keep in step, saved projects, and a test page that runs the app on real scores.
• Plainchant set aside: chant set on the five-line staff (0.19.0) is hidden until it can have the four-line staff it wants. A project's chant verses are kept, but not set.

0.21.0 (2026-10-21)

• Projects: Save project writes one .serenissima file with the book's scores and every setting; open it as you would a score to go on, on any device. The browser also keeps the last book open, and offers to pick it up after a reload.
• Tests: a project is saved and opened again, and must give the same book.

0.20.0 (2026-10-21)

• Voices kept in step: each bar is checked in every voice; a voice that makes a bar shorter or longer than the others (a dropped rest, a misread value, notes stacked that should follow one another) is named in the warnings with its bars and by how much, in note values.
• Tests: Clemens non Papa's Ego flos campi a 7 (Allen Garvin's edition, converted from PDF and corrected) and a score with a deliberate fault join the test page.

0.19.0 (2026-10-21)

• Plainchant between the polyphony: add chant verses in GABC (the notation of Gregorio and GregorioTeX), typed in or loaded from a .gabc file, before the piece or after any section, sung by all voices or by one. They are set in square notation in the music font, in their own clef, each starting a new line; a voice that does not sing a verse gets a "tacet".
• First initials where a voice first sings: a voice silent in an opening chant has its large initial on its first music, not on its "tacet".
• Tests: a test page in test/ loads the app with scores and settings and checks each book.

0.18.2 (2026-10-21)

• Numbering with the style: a printed book is numbered in arabic numerals by default, a manuscript in roman.
• Roman numerals in lower case: page and folio numbers (i, ii, iii), and numerals in voice, section and piece names (Bassus ii, Agnus Dei ii), are set in lower case, as the books set them.

0.18.1 (2026-10-21)

• Fresh scripts after an update: the page now asks for the scripts and stylesheet of its own version, so a browser that kept the previous ones (GitHub Pages lets it, for ten minutes) no longer mixes old and new. This left the new style buttons doing nothing just after 0.18.0 came out.

0.18.0 (2026-10-21)

• Printed or manuscript: partbooks and choirbooks are now either Printed · Renaissance or Manuscript · Gothic. The style sets the type, the initials, the ruling and a choirbook's staff; each can still be changed, and each format and style keeps its own choices. A printed book is black and white; a manuscript may have its initials (and a choirbook its "Residuum") in red. "Residuum" now goes with the manuscript style rather than with gothic type.
• No staves past the foot of a choirbook page: where keeping each voice at its place would push a voice off the page, the voices close up instead.
• More places to turn a choirbook's page: the page is still turned by preference at a bar nothing runs across, but where those are far apart (as in densely syncopated polyphony) it may fall at another bar, a voice holding a note across it ending its line with that note. Pieces that were set overfull before now fit.

0.17.0 (2026-10-21)

• "Residuum" in gothic choirbooks: with gothic type, a voice that carries on from the opening before has "Residuum" written down the indent beside its first staff, as in the manuscripts of the Alamire workshop (in red if the initials are). If the word is longer than one staff, the staves beside it are indented too.
• No section names in a choirbook: sections keep their names for the settings, a "tacet" and the index, but the names are no longer printed above the staves. Partbooks are unchanged.
• Scores from iPhone and iPad: iOS knows no file type for .mxl or .musicxml and greyed them out in the file picker. There the picker now offers every file, and a score is recognized by its contents.

0.16.0 (2026-10-20)

• Indent where a voice goes on: in a choirbook, a voice that carries on from the opening before starts its first staff a little in from the margin, so its singer sees at once where to pick up. A voice starting a new section or opening still starts at the margin, with its initial.

0.15.0 (2026-10-19)

• Choirbook staves and spacing after the period books: by default a choirbook's staff is as large, for the page, as in the books, and spaced as they were (staves about two staff-heights apart, the words close under them, the names above). Two models: the printed choirbooks (4.4% of the page high, after Moderne's print of Morales's masses: about 19 mm on 11 × 17) and the manuscript ones (4.1%, after the Alamire workshop: about 17.6 mm). "Modern" keeps a roomier page with smaller staves (about 12 mm on 11 × 17). Where a low note or a stem would touch the words, that line's syllables drop just clear of it.
• Each voice at its place on a choirbook page: of two voices on a page the second starts no higher than halfway down; of three, no higher than a third and two thirds of the way; and so on. A voice running on from the facing page is not held to this.

0.14.0 (2026-10-18)

• One initial per voice on a choirbook page: only the first section a voice sings on an opening has an initial, to mark where that voice's part begins. A later section set to start a new line begins with its words whole and its name above it. Partbooks are unchanged.

0.13.0 (2026-10-18)

• Sign where a voice runs on: in a choirbook, when a page is full and its lowest voice goes on at the foot of the facing page, a sign at the end of its last line and the same sign before its next line show the singer where to look, as in the printed choirbooks. Choose a fleur-de-lis, a pointing hand, a leaf (hedera) or none. The two lines are set shorter to leave room for it.
• Tacet in a ruled staff: on a ruled choirbook page a voice's "tacet" is set in the middle of its staff, the lines running up to it on each side.
• In gothic type the tacet, section names, index entries and imprint are upright (the rotunda has no italic, and was being slanted).

0.12.1 (2026-10-17)

• The release notes for 0.12.0 are laid out properly.

0.12.0 (2026-10-17)

• Text type: roman (EB Garamond) or gothic (Rotunda Pommerania), the rounded blackletter of the earliest music prints, set with long and round s and the printers' ligatures.
• EB Garamond is now shipped with the site instead of loaded from Google Fonts.

0.11.1 (2026-10-16)

• With Rule the unused staves on, a short last line runs on, empty, to the margin, as on a ruled page.

0.11.0 (2026-10-16)

• Choirbook pages ruled alike: at a given staff size every page has the same staves at the same places. The voices on a page share them, a busier voice taking more, and when a page is full its lowest voice runs on at the foot of the facing page, below that page's lowest part. Automatic staves are never smaller than 56 px; a part too long for that runs on to more openings.
• Rule the unused staves (optional, both formats): the staves the music leaves empty are drawn all the same, as in a manuscript ruled before the music was copied. Printed books left the space blank.
• The title page shrinks its text to fit, so an imprint is no longer cut off on a small landscape page.

0.10.0 (2026-10-16)

• Smaller page sizes: Octavo (about 11 × 17 cm, as Le Roy & Ballard's chanson books) and Quarto (about 16 × 22 cm, as the Venetian partbooks), with a hint that both were usually oblong; A5 and Half Letter. The page menu is grouped by size.
• On a small page an automatic partbook staff shrinks (to no less than 36 px) so a page still holds several lines.

0.9.0 (2026-10-16)

• Margins: narrow, normal or wide presets, a "book" preset after the proportions of printed books (narrowest at the binding, deepest at the foot), or custom top, bottom, inside and outside margins, in inches or (for A4 and A3) millimetres. Inside and outside are mirrored on left- and right-hand pages; in a choirbook the inside is the fold of the opening. Each format keeps its own.

0.8.1 (2026-10-16)

• The engraved capital initials are withdrawn; the other voices' and sections' initials default to the plain capital. The Libertinus Serif Initials font is no longer shipped.

0.8.0 (2026-10-16)

• Several pieces in one book: add files at any time, reorder or remove them; each keeps its own title, voices, sections, note values and transposition. Each partbook holds its voice of every piece that has it (a piece without that voice is left out, as with a Quintus book), the pieces following on below each other or on a new page; in a choirbook each piece starts a new opening.
• Sections in both formats: each can run on, start a new line with its own initial and name, or start a new page or opening. A voice silent through such a section gets a direction such as "Benedictus tacet", as in Morales's Liber primus missarum (1544).
• Numbering, title page and index, after the period books: partbooks numbered by page in the outer corner, choirbooks by leaf on the right-hand page, in Arabic or Roman numerals or not at all; an optional title page (one per partbook, headed by its voice) with an imprint; an index of the pieces at the back. Running heads give each piece's title and composer in a choirbook.
• Voice names at the head of the music can be left off where a piece begins, on later pages, or both.
• Editor: the settings are in groups that open and close; a light, dark or system theme (the pages stay paper-coloured).
• The "ij" option is withdrawn until it has been tested further.
• Fix: a long composer name no longer wraps under the title line.

0.7.0 (2026-10-15)

• Orientation: partbooks and choirbooks can be set portrait or landscape, each with its own setting; the PDF follows it.

0.6.1 (2026-10-15)

• Choirbooks no longer start sections or movements on a new opening by default: the music runs on from opening to opening, still turning only at a bar every voice has reached. Tick a section under Sections to start it on a new opening.

0.6.0 (2026-10-15)

• Page turns in choirbooks: the page is turned only where every singer has reached the same point. Sections are found from the edition's double and final barlines and named from the edition or from their first words. Sections share an opening while every voice has room, and a section too long for one opening is turned at a bar every voice has reached. A new Sections list lets you rename them and choose which must start a new opening.
• Each section ends with a double bar and starts with its own initial; a voice that rests through a whole section leaves it out.
• Partbooks keep a comfortable staff size and run on to as many pages as they need, instead of shrinking a voice to fit one page. "Fit to page" is now "Automatic".
• Feedback: a feedback form, no account needed, linked from the site; "Report a problem with this score" fills in the version and settings. Issue forms on GitHub, and a link to the repository on the site. The version is shown next to the title.
• Fix: in a choirbook, voices could reach the end of a page at different points in the music.

0.5.0 (2026-10-15)

• Clefs: "Period" (the default) prefers the common period clefs and reports clef changes as one note instead of warnings. "Modern" sets treble, octave treble and bass clefs for learners.
• Notes past the font's one built-in ledger line are drawn from the font's own note signs, with only the extra ledger lines they need.
• Optional ligature brackets from the edition, drawn above the staff; slurs guide text borrowed by untexted voices.
• New example: Victoria's O quam gloriosum.

0.4.0 (2026-10-15)

• Choral scores: a staff shared by two singers (S+A, T+B) is split into two voices by pitch; a lower voice without words takes the staff's text.
• Repeats are written out in full, with first and second endings and the right verse on each pass, or kept as written with the dotted repeat sign.
• Notes are placed by time, so gaps in a voice become rests.
• Fix: a stray hyphen after a one-letter first syllable taken by the initial.

0.3.0 (2026-10-14)

• Custom staff size, from 16 to 160 px.
• "ij" repeat signs: text sung again straight away can be written as "ij", as in period sources.

0.2.1 (2026-10-14)

• A prefatory incipit staff (original clef and mensuration over an invisible rest) is no longer printed; its clef and signs are used for the voice.
• Repeated warnings are shown once.

0.2.0 (2026-10-14)

• Decorated initials: woodcut, flourished Gothic and engraved styles. A choirbook opens with a large initial for the first voice and smaller ones, optionally red, for the others.

0.1.0 (2026-10-14)

• First beta: MusicXML to mensural partbooks and choirbooks in EMS Serenissima, with text underlay, printing to PDF. Includes the font cheat sheet and the original PowerShell converter.

Files

• index.html, css/, js/ — the web tool (convert.js: MusicXML to mensural tokens; layout.js: page layout; app.js: controls; zip.js: .mxl reader; gabc.js: plainchant in GABC, set aside for now and on only with ?chant in the address)
• test/ — the tests, with their scores in test/scores/ (among them Clemens non Papa's Ego flos campi, a 7, converted from Allen Garvin's edition, CC BY-NC 2.5): serve the repository (any local web server) and open /test/. Each case loads the app with a score and settings and checks the book: no errors, the warnings expected, nothing beyond the page. Headless: msedge --headless=new --virtual-time-budget=600000 --dump-dom http://localhost:PORT/test/ puts PASS n/n or FAIL k/n in the title and a report in #report (on virtual time the browser's storage never answers, so the project test skips picking up the last book; a browser run in real time covers it). Add a case to test/cases.js for each score that has caused trouble.
• cheatsheet.html — keyboard map of the font
• fonts/ — EMS Serenissima, the text fonts and the initial fonts, with their licences
• tools/ — the original Windows PowerShell converter (ConvertTo-Ems.ps1), which writes HTML/PDF books locally
• examples/ — Victoria's O quam gloriosum, the sample score

Credits

• Music font: EMS Serenissima by Elam Rotem, Early Music Sources, CC BY 4.0. See fonts/LICENSE-EMS_Serenissima.md.
• Text fonts: EB Garamond by Georg Duffner and Octavio Pardo and Rotunda Pommerania by Peter Wiegel (SIL Open Font License 1.1, see fonts/OFL-EBGaramond.txt and fonts/OFL-RotundaPommerania.txt), shipped unmodified; IM Fell French Canon (SIL Open Font License), loaded from Google Fonts.
• Initials: EB Garamond Initials by Georg Duffner (SIL Open Font License 1.1, see fonts/OFL-EBGaramond-Initials.txt); Yinit by Yannis Haralambous (public domain, see fonts/LICENSE-Yinit.md). Shipped unmodified from CTAN. Gotische Initialen, Rothenburg Decorative, Typographer Caps, Goudy Initialen and Zallman Caps by Dieter Steffmann, from the CTAN initials package (LaTeX Project Public License, see fonts/LPPL-Steffmann-Initials.txt): converted from Type 1 to WOFF with dvisvgm and renamed, the outlines unchanged. Cadels traced with potrace from Marco Antonio Rossi's Giardino de scrittori (Rome, 1598; scan on Wikimedia Commons) and Paul Franck's Kunstrichtige Schreibart (Nuremberg, 1601; the Getty Research Institute's copy of the 1655 printing, on the Internet Archive), both public domain; the outlines are in fonts/initials/.
• When you share a book, credit the editor of the MusicXML edition it was made from.