The Music Encoding Initiative (MEI) is a community-driven, open-source effort to define a system for encoding musical documents in a machine-readable structure. MEI brings together specialists from various music research communities, including technologists, librarians, historians, and theorists in a common effort to define best practices for representing a broad range of musical documents and structures. The results of these discussions are formalized in the MEI schema, a core set of rules for recording physical and intellectual characteristics of music notation documents expressed as an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) schema. It is complemented by the MEI Guidelines, which provide detailed explanations of the components of the MEI model and best practices suggestions. Read more …
MEI is co-hosted by the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz, and the RISM Digital Center, Bern.
If you want to become an active MEI member, you are invited to read more about the MEI community and how to join us. You are also invited to contribute to the development of MEI on GitHub, either submitting issues or making pull requests to solve these issues.
Posted Jan 13, 2026
In Spring 2025, the RISM Digital Center submitted a proposal to the MEI Board to co-host MEI together with the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur in Mainz. The proposal offered support for administrative tasks and financial management. It was discussed by both the MEI Board and the Akademie in Mainz and received a positive evaluation. It was agreed that the arrangement would take effect in January 2026. The MEI Board looks forward to benefiting from the additional support provided by the RISM Digital Center and to this strengthening of the MEI community.
Posted Jan 9, 2026
It is our pleasure to announce the results of the MEI Board elections (for the term 2026–2028). Elected by the MEI community are:
Posted Oct 28, 2025
On 31 December 2025, the terms of three MEI Board members will end. In the name of the entire MEI community, the MEI Board expresses its gratitude to Johannes Kepper, Anna Plaksin, and David M. Weigl for their service and dedication to MEI.