International Workshop of the Music Encoding Initiative MEI, Charlottesville

 

A workshop to evaluate and improve the specifications for the Music Encoding Initiative (MEI) schema took place in Charlottesville (Virginia, USA) in July. The event was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The MEI format aims to convey TEI concepts to music notation. It is the basis for an integration of music research data in TextGrid. Moreover the Musicology Seminar Detmold/ Paderborn as TextGrid partner is significantly engaged in its further development.

The performance of the data model was tested by samples of different periods of music history and the outcome gave an opportunity to discuss complex problems of different edition projects (Hildegard von Bingen, Beethoven, Gluck, Weber, Debussy etc.).

During  the next meeting in spring 2010 in Detmold, a special interest group will draft a first version of the user documentation for MEI, and convert the data format to ODD (One Document does it all) in order to provide a better compatibility to TEI as well as to achieve a greater flexibility of the format.

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