Methods, systems, and computer program products for generating an animated playback of a musical composition represented as a digital musical score. The methods involve, for each of a series of landmarks in the digital musical score: determining a temporal location of audio playback of the landmark in an audio playback of the composition; generating a video output frame showing a page of the musical score spanning the landmark in an output page format; generating a segment of the animated playback of the composition having a video component showing the video output frame for a duration approximately equal to the difference between temporal locations of audio playback of successive landmarks and an audio component including an audio rendering of a portion of the score between the successive landmarks; and generating the animated playback of the musical composition by concatenating the segments. The score format is optimized for the video aspect ratio.