Are there XML like Standards to write Sheet music

Question

Hey All,

Is there an xml or some form of a text standard that one can write music sheets in? For example:

<key= "C" />
<tempo= "90" />
<beat= "4/4" />
<measure id="1">
  // some form of music goes here
</measure>

Answer 1

You can use MusicXML.

Here is a list of XML music formats

Answer 2

About 10 years ago, a lot of projects were started to create XML formats for sheet music. MusicXML is the only one of these formats that has been widely adopted for common Western music notation. Over 120 programs support the format, including all the major music notation editors and music scanning programs. You can see a full list of MusicXML software at:

http://www.recordare.com/xml/software.html

The MusicXML format is available under an open, royalty-free license that is suitable for both commercial and open source projects. Both DTD and XSD versions of the specification are available. Tutorials, documentation, and a developer mailing list are also available via at the http://www.musicxml.org site.

Other formats are available for medieval Western music, including CMME for mensural music and NeumesXML for chant. You can find these at http://www.cmme.org and http://www.scribeserver.com/NEUMES/ respectively.

Gerd Castan's site is valuable for a history of different music notation formats. This is very helpful if you are designing a native format for your own application, as is the book Beyond MIDI. For an XML interchange format, though, MusicXML is probably what you are looking for.