LilyPond is a text-based music engraver; it is more similar to a programming language than a graphical score editing program.

LilyPond came about when two musicians wanted to go beyond the soulless look of computer-printed sheet music. Players prefer reading beautiful music, so why couldn’t programmers write software to produce elegantly printed parts?

The result is a program that creates beautiful sheet music following the best traditions of classical music engraving. It takes care of the details of layout programmatically, allowing composers, transcribers, and publishers to focus on the music instead of improving their software’s default output. Performers will get parts that let them concentrate on playing music instead of reading it.