Scores, Parts & Layouts

Viritura bridges the language musicians use with the names in the MNX data model. Those vocabularies overlap, but they are not identical: an MNX score definition can produce either a conductor's score or a performer's instrumental part.

Terminology

Public guides use the musician-facing terms unless they explicitly say MNX:

Term	Meaning
Document	The whole `.mnx` file: musical content, layouts, full and section scores, instrumental parts, metadata, and Viritura extensions.
Instrument	A musical source shown in Setup, such as Flute, Piano, or Percussion. Its music is normally stored in an MNX `part` object.
MNX part or source part	The schema object that owns musical content. It is not automatically a printed instrumental part.
Layout	An MNX tree of groups and staves that maps one or more source parts into visible staves.
MNX score definition	A schema object that selects one layout plus page and pitch-display settings. Despite its name, it can define a full score, section score, or instrumental part.
Full score or section score	A musician-facing, multi-instrument view used by a conductor, composer, or section.
Instrumental part or part extract	A musician-facing view prepared for one performer or instrument, such as Flute 1 or Piano. It is represented by an MNX score definition and layout.

The Viritura interface groups an MNX score definition under Scores when its layout references more than one source part, and under Parts when every staff comes from one source part. This is a Viritura presentation convention, not the meaning of score in the MNX schema.

Staff count alone does not decide the category. A grand-staff piano layout is still one instrumental part, while a percussion or choir layout containing several source parts is a score.

The crucial consequence is that an output's instrument membership is derived from its layout. Adding an instrument to a score adds a staff referencing that instrument's source part to the score's layout. Removing it from the score leaves the source part and its music in the document.

Where options live

The selected score or instrumental part does not own every setting shown on the canvas. Each layer has a different job:

Owner	Options
Document	Project metadata, global measures, tempo, opening key and time signatures
Instrument / MNX part	Music, long and short names, instrument identity, staff count, transposition, written-pitch preference
Layout	Which source parts appear, staff order, groups, brackets, labels, condensing sources
MNX score definition	Output name, selected layout, concert or written pitch, page setup, and output-specific measure-rest data

This separation is what allows one source part to appear in several outputs without duplicating its music. For example, the Clarinet in B-flat source part owns its transposition once, while the full score and clarinet instrumental part independently choose concert or written pitch and their own page setup.

The Setup panel

In Setup, Instruments edits the document's MNX source parts and Layouts edits the output views that reference them. Project metadata and opening music are document-level settings.

See Getting Started for the Setup workspace orientation.

Add an instrument

In Instruments, click Add instrument and pick from the catalog. Viritura adds its MNX source part to the document and creates its instrumental-part view automatically.

If the document contains multiple full or section scores, choose which of those multi-instrument scores should include the new instrument. This checklist updates only the selected score layouts; it does not decide whether the instrument or its instrumental part exists.

When you add a multi‑piece percussion kit, the percussion-map editor opens so you can map sounds and noteheads right away.

To add several instruments at once, use an ensemble template (string quartet, concert band, …) from the Instruments tab. Templates are not restricted to score creation — adding one to an already‑populated score is a single undoable edit.

Change an instrument

Expand an instrument in Instruments and choose Change Instrument…. Changes that preserve the staff structure and MNX note kind keep the existing music — for example, Flute to Oboe. Percussion-to-percussion changes rebind existing hits to the nearest position in the replacement map after confirmation.

The picker labels each choice Compatible, Review, or Add instead before selection. Expanding a one-staff instrument to a multi-staff instrument is safe: existing music stays on staff 1 and the additional staves start empty.

Viritura blocks destructive staff-count reductions such as Piano to Flute, and a populated pitched instrument cannot be changed directly to unpitched percussion. Use Add instead to create a new destination instrument, then move or rewrite the music deliberately.

When MusicXML identifies percussion only by staff position, import opens each uncertain Percussion Map for review. Confirm or edit the inferred sounds; recognized MusicXML instrument-sound mappings import without interruption.

Percussion maps

Choose Edit Percussion Map… on an unpitched instrument to configure its playback sounds, staff positions, and noteheads. See Percussion Maps for the complete workflow.

Manage a score's instruments

In Setup → Layouts, right‑click a score header for Manage Instruments… — a checklist (grouped by family) of every instrument in the document, pre‑checked to the score's current contents. Check to add, uncheck to remove. Removing an instrument here keeps its source part and music in the document; it only leaves that score's layout.

You can also right‑click an individual staff for Remove from this Score, or use the score header's + Add instrument menu to add an instrument that is not yet present.

Build a section score

To create a score for a subset of instruments, such as a percussion section, use Add Score → Section Score…:

Name the score.
Tick the instruments to include — grouped by family.
Create.

You get a new section score containing exactly those instruments, with multi‑member families bracketed together (so glock + timpani share one Percussion bracket). The other instruments and outputs remain unchanged.

Grouping and brackets

In Layouts you can select sibling staves or groups and Create Group to wrap them in a bracket. Selecting every member of adjacent groups rolls them up into one parent bracket while preserving the existing groups as nested sub‑brackets — the standard way to bracket a whole brass section while keeping the horn and trumpet sub‑groups intact.

Drag staves and groups to reorder them; drag a row near the top or bottom edge and the list auto‑scrolls.

Transposing instruments

Transposition belongs to the source part

Expand an instrument in Setup → Instruments to edit its transposition:

Chromatic is the sounding-to-written distance in semitones.
Staff distance is the same interval measured in diatonic staff steps. It controls the written note name and spelling.
Key flip at is the advanced enharmonic threshold used to avoid impractical written key signatures with too many sharps or flats.

The interval convention is:

sounding pitch + transposition interval = written pitch

For example, a B-flat clarinet uses +2 chromatic semitones and +1 staff step: sounding B-flat is displayed as written C. Editing the transposition changes the derived pitch in every output that renders that source part at written pitch; concert-pitch outputs continue to show the stored sounding pitch.

Concert or written pitch belongs to the output

In the normal editing activities, the Concert / Written control in the status bar updates only the score or instrumental part currently selected in the header. It persists on that MNX score definition as useWritten.

Concert displays stored sounding pitches.
Written applies each source part's transposition to notes and key signatures.

Every output chooses independently. A full score can remain at concert pitch while the clarinet part uses written pitch. Switching the control changes display without rewriting the stored music, which remains at sounding pitch.

New documents default the full score to concert pitch. An automatically created instrumental part for a transposing instrument defaults to written pitch.

Review has its own presentation-only Concert / Written control so both compared revisions use the same pitch view. That Review control does not change either revision or the open document.

Prefers written pitches is an instrument exception

The instrument option is Prefers written pitches, not “prefers concert pitch.” It means the source part remains written even when the selected output is set to Concert.

Viritura enables this convention for pure-octave transposers such as piccolo, glockenspiel, xylophone, guitar, contrabassoon, and double bass. Showing their sounding octave would add unnecessary ledger lines without helping a conductor compare pitch classes.

The effective display rule is:

Output `useWritten`	Source part prefers written	Display
Off	Off	Concert
On	Off	Written
Off	On	Written
On	On	Written

Use this exception only when the instrument is conventionally octave-displaced. For ordinary transposing instruments such as B-flat clarinet or horn in F, leave it off and let each output's Concert / Written setting decide.

Output-specific page setup

Page setup belongs to each MNX score definition, so outputs sharing the same music can use different paper, staff, margin, and page-turn settings. Configure them in Engraving & Layout.

Why it's modeled this way

Keeping source parts, layouts, and score definitions separate means one instrument's music lives in exactly one place, even though it can appear in a full score, section score, and instrumental part. Edit a note once and it is correct in every output.

For score-wide typography, page setup, systems, and condensing, see Engraving & Layout.