MusicXML

MusicXML is an XML Vocabulary designed to represent musical scores, specifically common western musical notation from the 17th century onwards. It is designed as an interchange format for notation, analysis, retrieval, and performance applications.

MusicXML is based on the MuseData and Humdrum formats. Humdrum explicitly represents the two-dimensional nature of musical scores by a 2-D layout notation. Since XML is a hierarchical format, we cannot do this directly. Instead, there are two top-level formats:

You can learn more about MusicXML and the open standards organization that is developing it at www.musicxml.org.