Project report

Release: Musicological Markup in the mei-friend editor

The new functions developed as part of the project to expand the editorial markup were released in the mei-friend Editor on January 24, 2025. Thanks to this innovation, users can now edit music notations in MEI format (Music Encoding Initiative) even more precisely and add detailed annotations. This represents a considerable advantage for the creation of interactive digital music editions.

Musicological MarkUp: Improved annotation of music data

The project, which was realized in close cooperation with the Institute for Musical Acoustics – Wiener Klangstil at mdw - University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, includes a significant extension of the mei-friend editor, which improves the way in which music data can be marked up and annotated. With the new markup tool, changes in the music text can now be described and analyzed even more specifically. 

The user-friendly interface ensures that the application is easy to use for both beginners and experienced researchers. Thanks to the integration of modern technologies such as CodeMirror and Verovio, editing and visualizing music notation is faster and more intuitive. The extended functionality also promotes collaboration on musicological projects, as users can now access shared resources and work together even more easily. 

This enhancement further strengthens the use of the MEI format in musicology and improves access to digital music resources. The new markup tool offers an even more detailed and flexible way to analyze and document music data - supporting both research and practical work with music notation. 
Screenshot from the editor

Links

mei-friend is available at:
https://mei-friend.mdw.ac.at/ 

More information can be found on the help pages at 
https://mei-friend.github.io/. 

Plaksin, A. (2023). Understanding the needs of music editors in a digital world. Adding supportfor editorial markup to the mei-friend editor. Proc. of the 10th Int. Conference on DigitalLibraries for Musicology (DLfM’23), 40–48. 
https://doi.org/10.1145/3625135.3625149

Pictures by: Alexander Mayer
People on pictures: Werner Goebl (IWK), David M. Weigl (IWK), Anna Plaksin, Andreas-Prohl Plaksin