OASIS has opened a public email list for the purpose of discussing the creation of one or more Technical Committees related to machine-processable music notation. According to a draft proposal for discussion, the purpose of the Music Notation XML TC would be "to develop a standard XML format for common Western musical notation."

Scope and rationale: "Although there are clearly a number of applications for such an XML standard, the proposed TC would initially focus on an XML standard to serve as an interchange format for score writing, music notation editing, and music publishing products. Many music notation products are already using XML for either interchange or native data storage. For example, interchange between Sibelius and Finale can be done using the MusicXML format. A major goal of the TC would be to minimize migration issues for existing music applications moving to an OASIS music notation standard. The TC would expect to receive and build upon existing music notation XML applications such as MusicXML and MEI as contributions to its work. These applications date back to 2000 and reflect the DTD technology of the time. The work of the TC might include modernizing current applications to improve support for schemas, namespaces, and other W3C and OASIS standards."

The 'music-notation-discuss' discussion list will be active for a maximum of 90 days (through calendar year 2003), during which time the list participants will decide if there is sufficient interest to form an OASIS TC. Public participation in the discussion list is welcome.

SGML/XML Markup for Musical Notation

Several projects have addressed the creation of XML DTDs and Schemas for representation of music and music notation. Examples:

• SMDL - Standard Music Description Language
• Music Encoding Initiative (MEI)
• MusicXML Definition
• WEDELMUSIC XML Notation
• Enhanced Musical Notation Markup Language (EMNML)
• eXtensible Score Language (XScore)
• Music and Lyrics Markup Language (4ML)
• Music Markup Language (MML)
• FlowML: A Format for Virtual Orchestras
• MusiXML
• IMS MUSIC-XML Project
• ChordML, Actos, and ChordQL
• Notation Interchange File Format (NIFF)
• MuTaTeD! - Music Tagging Type Definition
• MusicML
• Musical Notation Markup Language (MNML)