Scriptorium

Medieval music notation editor

Scriptorium is a free visual editor for creating medieval music notation and manuscript-style pages directly in a web browser. It is designed for musicians, performers, teachers, students, researchers and anyone reconstructing historical notation.

The editor does not impose musical rules or automatic engraving. Every symbol remains a freely movable graphic element, allowing you to reproduce unusual historical layouts as well as create new pages inspired by medieval manuscripts. No installation or registration is required.

Getting started

1. Choose black or red ink.
2. Select a notation symbol in the left palette.
3. Click the page to place it, then drag it into position.
4. Adjust staves and page dimensions in the right panel.
5. Save the editable project as JSON or export the finished page as SVG or PNG.

Symbols

Choose a notation system above the palette. The current sets are Quadratic and Black Mensural notation and Ugarit/Hurrian musical signs. Click a symbol and then click the page to place it. Click the same armed symbol again to cancel placement.

Black and red ink

Choose Black for the main notation or Red for rubrics and highlighted signs. The selected ink is applied to newly placed symbols; the color of an existing symbol can also be changed in Selected object.

Editing a placed symbol

Select a symbol on the page to move, duplicate, resize, rotate, recolor, delete or change its layer order. Exact X and Y coordinates, scale and rotation are available in the right panel.

Staves

Set the number of systems, choose 1, 2, 4 or 5 lines per system, line spacing, first position, staff width, distance between systems, line thickness and line color. Optional hand-drawn irregularity gives the rules a subtle manuscript character (black, red or gray). Staves are locked and cannot be selected accidentally.

Page and view

Use an A4 portrait or landscape preset, or enter custom dimensions. Zoom changes only the working view. A transparent background can be enabled for SVG and PNG exports.

Zoom

Zoom in or out to work on details or inspect the whole page. Zoom does not change the dimensions or resolution of exported files.

Saving and export

Save JSON stores an editable Scriptorium project that can be reopened with Load JSON. Export SVG creates a scalable vector page. Export PNG creates a raster image at the width specified in the Page panel.

Keyboard controls

Arrow keys move a selected symbol by 1 px; Shift + arrows move it by 10 px. Delete removes it, Ctrl/Cmd + D duplicates it, brackets change layer order, plus and minus resize it, Q and E rotate it, and Escape deselects it. Press F1 to open this help.