The Music Encoding Initiative (MEI)

The Music Encoding Initiative (MEI) DTD is an XML DTD for the representation and exchange of music information. It is designed to be comprehensive, that is, it provides ways to encode data from all the separate domains, i.e. logical, visual, gestural (performance), and analytical, commonly associated with music. In addition, the DTD accommodates bibliographic description that is required for archival uses. It also addresses relationships between elements, cooperative creation and editing of music markup, navigation within the music structure as well as to external multimedia entities, the inclusion of custom symbols, etc. Unlike other music representation schemes, MEI can record the scholarly textual apparatus frequently found in modern editions of music.

The DTD

THIS IS AN OLD VERSION OF THE DTD. The latest version is available at http://www.lib.virginia.edu/digital/resndev/mei/. In order to see the files below, you may have to right-click on them and select "Save Target As ..."

The complete DTD in a single file:

• mei15bFull.dtd

Individual MEI DTD components:

• mei15b.dtd - DTD 'driver' file which includes the other modules
• meiBase.dtd - Declares the 'core' elements
• meiHead.dtd - Declares elements used in the metadata header
• meiMeas.dtd - Declares the measure element and its contents
• meiMIDI.dtd - Declares MEI MIDI events
• meiShared.dtd - Declares elements common to more than one component
• meiText.dtd - Declares elements used in the text portions, e.g. header, front, and back, of MEI
• meiChars.ent - Contains text character entity declarations
• meiClass.ent - Contains declarations of shared attributes and content models
• meiGIs.ent - Contains name declarations for all the elements in the MEI DTD
• meiKey.ent - Contains data type and attribute value list declarations
• meiNotats.ent - Contains XML notation declarations

If you'd like more information about MEI, please e-mail the project leader.