I find the look in general thinner and not so heavy compared with Bravura. But in all honesty, just the fact that it says in the description “This fine typeface was designed to bring back some of the subtleties of hand-engraved scores…” also plays a rol in my decision to give it a try. Probably some kind of nostalgic feeling to want my score to have the look of the past. Call me an old-fashioned romantic… 
Abraham actually ported to SMuFL first the font that looks the most like Bravura. I can’t wait for him to port his other gorgeous fonts to SMuFL as well!
Interesting - the thing I like about Bravura is that most of the music fonts that are bundled with notation software are too thin and “spidery.” - except for the “imitation hand-written” fonts that are just plain unreadable IMO (though real hand-written music can be perfectly legible!)
I suspect this may reflect the fact that the fonts were designed long ago for use with relatively low-resolution printers compared with today’s technology, which would necessarily thicken up the lines etc in order to print them at all.
The Lilypond fonts named after cheeses (feta, emmentaler, etc) were nice and bold as well, but they don’t look so good as Bravura in small sizes IMO.
I think Cadence really looks like Bravura. Except for a caesura (which I like better) and a wavy gliss line (that does not really look good, since I can see the different bits of it), I could not easily find any difference. [Edit] I notice that, when there is pedalling and Dorico diplays (Ped) in parens, Cadence displays it between two rectangles…
Let’s say I just endorse the creator, in order for him to go on creating good fonts for us Dorico users !
Yes, I agree. I would like to try out for example the MTF-Haydn font.
Thank you, MarcLarcher, for your confidence and support. The fonts are only getting better and better all the time and the compatibility with SMuFL is definitely coming.
If there are similarities between Bravura and Cadence, it is complete coincidence. But, yes, they were both designed with the hand-engraved look in mind.
I am hard at work expanding the number of glyphs so that there are fewer and fewer “tofu” rectangles, except for some corner cases. Hopefully by then, though, users will have the ability to specify the font for each individual glyph so there’s always Bravura to use when the font is missing something.
@Andre, I’m so glad to hear that everything is working smoothly for you! Hope you enjoy using Cadence.
Cadence is rather alike Bravura because they both drank from the same sources, I imagine: printed music (probably via Notaset) from some of the best publishers of the 19th century — something sturdy, that can handle everything elegantly, without being too distinctive, like, say, your gorgeous MTF-Haydn. Hopefully it was clear I never meant to imply any other link, and it makes perfect sense that Cadence was the first to be SMuFL-compliant.
I wish I had more time to dabble in font design… I’ve been periodically pestering Daniel for three years now, but I’m yet to find the right design to flesh out. I really like emulating handwriting, to complicate things…!
Thanks, Andre and others for your comments and clarifications. I am tempted to try Cadence or even one of other MTF fonts once they become SMuFL compliant…