Hi All,
A fairly regular recurrence in the Dorico forums is the request for right-to-left music notation support. This would be a powerful arrow in Dorico’s already impressive quiver, and provide a method for the many millions across the world who read right-to-left languages.
I was first exposed to right-to-left music as an organist for the Maronite Church. This allowed choir members to read their music in the same direction they read the lyrics, which is much more natural than splitting the difference of marrying a right-to-left language (Arabic, in this case) with a left-to-right one (music notation). Romanizing the lyrics provides some relief, but does not always capture the pronunciation of the original language, even when transliterated by someone who has a native level proficiency in both languages.
Right-to-left music notation support would help Arabic, Syriac, Aramaic, and Hebrew speakers to name a few.
Here are a couple posts over the years where this request has come up:
- * A post originally about complex meter but included discussion of right-to-left music with examples given
- * A post explicitly about capturing Hebrew, Arabic, or Aramaic Lyrics
A Few Examples:
