A proposal for the integration of symbolic music notation into multimedia frameworks

Integration of music notation in multimedia frameworks, and particularly in MPEG, could open new ways of valorization for that important part of our cultural heritage that is known as "music notation". Integration of music notation with multimedia content could also increase the distribution and diffusion of music notation. Moreover, integration with video, interactivity, digital rights management would enable the development of a huge number of completely new applications in several domains, from education and distance learning, to rehearsal and musical practice at home, and any forms of enjoyment of music that can be imagined. For these reasons we started a work for integrating symbolic music representation into MPEG standardization process and format. A proposal for realizing this integration in the MPEG-4 players is presented together with the main relationships that the symbolic music representation could have with all the MPEG components. The proposal is grounded on the basis of the assessment of the requirements of a large set of emerging new applications in which music notation is synchronized with multimedia content.