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By Gino Robair

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A number of universal file formats are underdevelopment that will allow musicians to exchange music over the Internet more easily. In the field of notated music, the most exciting one is MusicXML. Developed by Michael Good at Recordare (www.musicxml.org), MusicXML utilizes the widely accepted tools of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and was created as a universal translator for symbolic representations of music.

Unlike typographically oriented markup languages, such as HTML, XML focuses on the content of a page, making it well suited for use with notated music. At this stage in its development, MusicXML allows you to translate musical documents scanned using the Visiv SharpEye Music Reader (www.visiv.co.uk) into Finale (version 2000 or later) files (www.codamusic.com). "Up to this point," explains Good, "musical scores have been distributed online either as PDF files or in a proprietary file format. MusicXML gives you a way to move scores easily between different computer applications."

MusicXML was designed to be an "adequate" (Recordare's description) interchange format--neither too specific nor too general--so that it could easily be implemented into commercial software. For example, the Standard Music Description Language (SMDL; see the September 2001 "Web Page") was too generalized as a music-description protocol and ultimately proved too complicated for widespread use. On the other hand, the Notation Interchange File Format (NIFF; see the August 2001 "Web Page") only represents music graphically and is too limited for most uses.

Future additions to MusicXML will include the ability to handle tablature and percussion notation, and the support of analysis and database applications. It's expected to be in development for several more years, but when analysis and database support become available, users will be able to sort MusicXML documents and to search for symbolic content. For more information about MusicXML and other computer-related music-notation developments, take a look at The Virtual Score (MIT Press), edited by Walter B. Hewlett and Eleanor Selfridge-Field (see "What's New," p. 20, for details).

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Last updated January 5, 2004.