Digital Encoding of Music Notation with MEI
Axel Teich Geertinger
There are profound differences between the notation of text and music in terms of their purpose, use of symbols and how they translate into a machine-readable form. This paper identifies the difficulties of encoding music notation as compared to text and how these difficulties may be handled. Despite the challenges, encoding formats for notated music which are as sophisticated as comparable textual formats are now available, such as the XML schema defined by the Music Encoding Initiative (MEI). But are there any limits to what is possible to encode? The author argues that today the primary limiting factor is not the available encoding systems but rather the ambiguity and complexity of music notation itself. Introduction Compared to text or sound, digital research involving notated music seems to develop somewhat more slowly; relevant innovations and trends in the field of text encoding are usually only adapted by music encoding systems after a certain delay. To some degree, I will argue, this delay is due to the challenges involved in music encoding. There are definitely profound differences between text and music notation in terms of purpose, sets of symbols and how these translate into a format processable by a computer. My first question is therefore: why do these differences make encoding music notation difficult? The other ques35