The copyist is to the composer as the printer is to the novelist. Taking the composerΓÇÖs manuscript of a new work, the copyist writes it out neatly both as a full score, and in the form of the separate parts for each different performer. A painstaking and highly skilled job, that needs excellent musical knowledge and artistic judgement in the apt laying out of all the musical symbols on the page. Quite often new works are published in the form of photographic copies of the hand copyists work. Nowadays, some copying is being undertaken on computers with software that provides a sort of musical word-processor, but this process can take a lot longer than old-fashioned hand-copying, and the results can be comparatively lifeless on the page. See also notation.
