MuseData

MuseData is a dynamic environment for music encoding, printing, and archiving. It was conceived and has been developed since 1984 to the present by Walter B. Hewlett. MuseData seeks to support the creation, editing, and use of full scores and their by-products (scores, short-scores, parts; datasets for music analysis; and linkage with sound output). Its focus, originally limited to conventional music notation (1600-1860), has been extended selectively to support projects involving mensural and other early notations.

MuseData is a dynamic system. Musical scores can be updated only with difficut in traditional print-oriented scenarios. MuseData has maintained backward compatibility since its beginnings. The data ifself can be modified to capture new information, changing interpretations, and new arrangements. This sets its overall operation apart from situation in which continuous software development orphans data encoded in the past.

The Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities (CCARH), currently hosted by the Packard Humanities Institute and physically based at Stanford University, has used MuseData extensively in the encoding of classical repertories. The production of performing materials is undertaken selectively (see below). Currently, more than 1,100 works have been encoded to a common, documented format.

The score-generation site musedata.org supports virtual online editing. It is largely used to make PDFs that identify editors and date of printing in the footer.

See MuseData: file format for a description of the endoding format.

See http://www.musedata.org for access to the musical data.

See pages such as Corelli, Beethoven, Handel and Vivaldi for musically-oriented access to the data.

Other scores can be found on http://scores.ccarh.org