This chapter describes the elements, models, and attributes that are part of the MEI.shared module. The shared module contains declarations that are common to two or more other modules.
The following elements are available for the representation of the outermost structure of an MEI document:
A typical MEI document contains an mei element, which in turn contains metadata, represented by an meiHead element, and the musical text itself, represented by a music element. The meiHead element, formally declared in the MEI.header module, is described in chapter The MEI Header.
Other variations on this basic form are also available for the representation of a:
Further information regarding the organization and encoding of music corpora is given in chapter Musical Corpora. Stand-alone headers are more fully described in chapter Independent Headers.
Inclusion of MEI encodings (partial or complete) inside Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) documents is covered in the TEI Guidelines at http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/FT.html#FTNM and by the TEI Music Special Interest Group at http://www.tei-c.org/SIG/Music/twm/index.html.
MEI texts may be regarded either as unitary; that is, forming an organic whole, or as composite; that is, consisting of several components which are in some important sense independent of each other. The distinction is not always entirely obvious. For example, a collection of songs might be regarded as a single item in some circumstances, or as a number of distinct items in others. In such borderline cases, the encoder must choose whether to treat the text as unitary or composite; each option may have advantages and disadvantages.
Whether unitary or composite, the musical text is marked with the music tag and may contain front matter, a body, and back matter. In unitary texts, the body is tagged using the body element; in composite texts, however, where the textual body consists of a series of subordinate musical texts or other groups, it is tagged with the group element. The overall structure of any musical text, unitary or composite, is thus defined by the following elements:
Critical editions and collections of works often contain extensive text, such as a title page, table of contents, an introductory essay, commentary, biographical sketch, index, etc. These textual items may appear in either the front or back elements. The front and back elements, available only when the MEI.text module is activated, are described more fully in chapter Text in MEI.
The overall structure of a single musical text is:
<mei>
<meiHead>
<!-- metadata goes here -->
</meiHead>
<music>
<front>
<!-- front matter of text, if any, goes here -->
</front>
<body>
<!-- body of text goes here -->
</body>
<back>
<!-- back matter of text, if any, goes here -->
</back>
</music>
</mei>The top-level structure of a composite musical text made up of two unitary musical texts is:
<mei>
<meiHead>
<!-- metadata for the composite musical text -->
</meiHead>
<music>
<front>
<!-- front matter for composite musical text -->
</front>
<group>
<music>
<front>
<!-- front matter of first unitary musical text, if any -->
</front>
<body>
<!-- body of first unitary musical text -->
</body>
<back>
<!-- back matter of first unitary musical text, if any -->
</back>
</music>
<music>
<body>
<!-- body of second unitary musical text -->
</body>
</music>
</group>
<back>
<!-- back matter for composite musical text, if any -->
</back>
</music>
</mei>The group element may be used to represent a collection of independent musical texts which is to be regarded as a single unit for processing or other purposes. It is provided to simplify the encoding of collections, anthologies, and cyclic works. It can also be used to record the potentially complex internal structure of corpora, covered more fully in chapter Musical Corpora.
Examples of composite texts which may be represented using the group element include anthologies and other collections. The presence of common front matter referring to the whole collection, possibly in addition to front matter relating to each individual musical text, is a good indication that a given musical text might usefully be encoded in this way.
For example, the overall structure of a collection of songs might be encoded as follows:
<music>
<group>
<music>
<!-- song 1 -->
</music>
<music>
<!-- song 2 -->
</music>
<!-- additional songs here -->
</group>
</music>A group of musical texts may contain other unitary and grouped texts:
<music>
<group>
<music>
<!-- song 1 -->
</music>
<group>
<!-- songs sharing one or more characteristics, treated as a group -->
<music>
<!-- song 2 -->
</music>
<music>
<!-- song 3 -->
</music>
</group>
</group>
</music>The group element may be used to encode any kind of collection in which the constituents are regarded by the encoder as works in their own right, such as ad hoc single- or multiple-composer collections or anthologies of works not originally conceived of as a single composition.
This section describes sub-division of the body of a musical text. Front and back matter are described in chapter Text in MEI.
The body of a unitary musical text may contain one or more discrete, linear segments. The names commonly used for these structural subdivisions vary with the genre, style, and time period of the music, or even at the whim of the author, editor, or publisher. For example, a major subdivision of a symphony is generally referred to as a ‘movement’. An opera, on the other hand, is usually organized into ‘acts’ and then further by ‘scenes’. All such divisions are treated as occurrences of the same neutrally-named element, with a @type attribute used to categorize them independently of their hierarchic level.
The following element is used to identify musical subdivisions. As a member of the class att.typed, the mdiv element has attributes which can be used to classify it according to a two-tier hierarchy.
To accommodate “divisions within divisions”, an mdiv element may contain additional mdiv sub-elements nested to any level required. For example, the encoding of a multi-movement work, such as a symphony, frequently have the following structure:
<body xmlns="http://www.music-encoding.org/ns/mei" xmlns:rng="http://relaxng.org/ns/structure/1.0" xmlns:sch="http://purl.oclc.org/dsdl/schematron">
<mdiv type="symphony">
<mdiv n="1" type="movement">
<!-- contents of mvt 1 -->
</mdiv>
<mdiv n="2" type="movement">
<!-- contents of mvt 2 -->
</mdiv>
<mdiv n="3" type="movement">
<!-- contents of mvt 3 -->
</mdiv>
<mdiv n="4" type="movement">
<!-- contents of mvt 4 -->
</mdiv>
</mdiv>
</body>while dramatic works, such as Verdi’s opera, Il Trovatore, often exhibit a more deeply-nested structure:
<body>
<mdiv type="opera">
<mdiv n="I" type="act">
<mdiv n="1" type="scene">
<!-- contents of act I, sc. 1 -->
</mdiv>
<mdiv n="2" type="scene">
<!-- contents of act I, sc. 2-->
</mdiv>
<mdiv n="3" type="scene">
<!-- contents of act I, sc. 3 -->
</mdiv>
</mdiv>
<mdiv n="II" type="act">
<mdiv n="1" type="scene">
<!-- contents of act II, sc. 1 -->
</mdiv>
<mdiv n="2" type="scene">
<!-- contents of act II, sc. 2 -->
</mdiv>
<mdiv n="3" type="scene">
<!-- contents of act II, sc. 3 -->
</mdiv>
<mdiv n="4" type="scene">
<!-- contents of act II, sc. 4 -->
</mdiv>
<mdiv n="5" type="scene">
<!-- contents of act II, sc. 5 -->
</mdiv>
</mdiv>
<mdiv n="III" type="act">
<mdiv n="1" type="scene">
<!-- contents of act III, sc. 1 -->
</mdiv>
<mdiv n="2" type="scene">
<!-- contents of act III, sc. 2 -->
</mdiv>
<mdiv n="3" type="scene">
<!-- contents of act III, sc. 3 -->
</mdiv>
</mdiv>
<mdiv n="IV" type="act">
<mdiv n="1" type="scene">
<!-- contents of act IV, sc. 1 -->
</mdiv>
<mdiv n="2" type="scene">
<!-- contents of act IV, sc. 2 -->
</mdiv>
<mdiv n="3" type="scene">
<!-- contents of act IV, sc. 3 -->
</mdiv>
</mdiv>
</mdiv>
</body>Conventionally, in performance the musical structures represented by mdiv elements are separated by pauses; however, attacca, attacca subito, seque, or similar terms are sometimes used at the end of an mdiv to indicate that the next mdiv should begin immediately after the conclusion of the current one. These terms have no effect, however, on the logical segmentation of musical content using mdiv elements.
The mdiv element may contain one or both of two possible views: score and parts.
The score element represents notation in which all the parts of an ensemble are arranged on vertically aligned staves, while the parts element collects the individually notated parts for each performer or group of performers. The explicit encoding of these two ‘views’ is necessary because it is not always possible or desirable to automatically derive one view from the other. In addition, separating scores and parts can eliminate a great deal of markup complexity.
<body>
<mdiv n="1" type="movement">
<score>
<!-- markup of score goes here -->
</score>
<parts>
<!-- markup of performers’ parts goes here -->
</parts>
</mdiv>
<!-- additional movements go here -->
</body>The score and parts elements may also be employed to accommodate different methods of organizing the markup – with no particular presentation implied. In this case, software may render a collection of parts as a score or a score as a collection of parts.
Within the collective parts element, notation for a single performer is represented by the part element:
A part is effectively a small-scale score, allowing all the encoding features of a full score, such as multiple staves, performance directives, and so on. A group of part element is useful for encoding performing parts when there is no score, such as in early music part books; when the parts have non-aligning bar lines; when different layout features, such as page turns, are needed for the score and parts; or for accommodating software that requires part-by-part encoding.
Please note that part elements in MEI are not an indication of voice leading or staff grouping. Voice leading can be encoded using the @next attribute, available on all the members of the model.eventLike class. The staffGrp element handles grouping of staves in the score context.
<parts>
<part label="Violin 1">
<!-- first performer’s part -->
</part>
<part label="Violin 2">
<!-- second performer’s part -->
</part>
<!-- additional performers’ parts -->
</parts>In both score and part views, the scoreDef element is used to describe logical characteristics of the encoded music, such as key signature, the sounding key (as opposed to the notated key signature), meter, etc., and visual features, such as page size, staff groupings and display labels, etc. The staffGrp elements within scoreDef and the order of staffDef elements inside staffGrp should follow the score order of the source for the encoding.
A part or score may be further divided into linear segments called “sections”.
section elements are often used as a scoping mechanism for clef signs, key and meter signatures, as well as metronome, tempo, and expression markings. Using section elements can help to minimize the need for backward scanning to establish context when the starting point for access is not at the beginning of the score. section elements may also be used for other user-defined, i.e., analytical or editorial, purposes and may therefore be arbitrarily nested to any desired level.
The ending element shares the same model as the section element. Unlike section, however, it may not be recursively nested.
The most common (non-analytical, non-editorial) use of section and ending elements is illustrated below:
<music>
<body>
<mdiv>
<score>
<section>
<!-- section one to be repeated -->
</section>
<ending n="1">
<!-- 1st ending -->
</ending>
<ending n="2">
<!-- 2nd ending -->
</ending>
<section>
<!-- next section -->
</section>
</score>
</mdiv>
</body>
</music>Within section elements, several methods of organization are possible, depending upon the notational style of the source material and the encoder’s needs. For example, when the MEI.cmn module is used, the default organization is measure-by-measure, with staff and layer sub-elements within each measure. Further discussion of CMN notation is continued in chapter Common Music Notation.
However, staff-by-staff organization is more appropriate for music without measures and is provided when either the MEI.mensural or MEI.neumes module is employed. Coverage of mensural notation is provided in chapter Mensural Notation, while Neume Notation describes neumatic notation.
It must be noted that, when both the MEI.cmn and MEI.mensural modules are available, it is possible to encode CMN notation without using measure elements; that is, staff-by-staff organization may be used and the ends of measures marked using barLine elements.
In certain circumstances, this approach may be preferable for reproduction of the visual layout of the music. However, the simultaneous use of the measure and barLine elements may lead to confusion and should be avoided.
Typically, MEI follows the order of sections as they appear in the document being encoded. When performance requires a different order, for instance in the case of D.C. and D.S. directives, the following element may be used to define the performance order.
In the following example, expansion is used to indicate how the notated sections should be ordered in a “through-composed” rendition, for example for machine performance or analysis. The plist attribute contains an ordered list of identifiers of descendant section, ending, lem, or rdg elements. The sequence of values in the plist attribute indicates that the section labelled ‘A’ comes first, then the section labelled ‘B’, followed by the ‘A’ section again. This mechanism must be specified independently of any textual directives, such as “Da capo” or “D.S. al Fine”, that may be present in the document.
<music>
<body>
<mdiv>
<score>
<section>
<expansion plist="#shared.A #shared.B #shared.A"></expansion>
<section xml:id="shared.A">
<!-- "A" section -->
</section>
<section xml:id="shared.B">
<!-- "B" section -->
</section>
</section>
</score>
</mdiv>
</body>
</music>This section lists the elements defined in the shared module that are available within the music element.
The following elements are provided for the capture of scores and parts:
The character of elements specifying one or more score or staff parameters, such as meter and key signature, clefs, etc., is that of a milestone; that is, they affect all subsequent material until a following redefinition. A scoreDef element, which may affect more than just one staff, is allowed only within score, part and section elements, whereas staffDef is allowed only within staffGrp, staff and layer. A staffDef nested inside a staff must bear the same value for its @n attribute as its parent staff and may thus not affect other staves.
The actual use of these elements depends on the repertoire and historical context of the source material. For details on their use in Common Western Notation, please refer to chapter Defining Score Parameters for CMN.
The elements below are used to capture the logical organization of musical notation:
The actual use of the staff and layer elements depends on the repertoire and historical context of the source material. For details on their use in Common Western Notation, please refer to chapter The Role of the Measure Element. For mensural notation, see chapter Music Data Organization, and for neumatic notation, chapter Neume Notation.
The basic features of music notation are represented by the following elements:
The characteristics of stems on notes and chords are indicated by means of attributes found in the att.stems class.
Because they can occur in the context of a stream of events on the staff, some elements which are used in other contexts are also treated as events. For example, in addition to being used to define the initial clef of a staff, the clef element can also be used to indicate a clef change.
Key signatures and clefs as well as intra-staff changes to these musical parameters are treated as events.
Measure separators, i.e., bar lines, and custos signs are also considered to be events.
The following elements are regarded as events primarily because they sometimes occur independently of any associated notes, rests, or chords, especially in mensural and neume repertoires.
The syl element is used to mark a word or portion of a word that is to be vocally performed. A fuller description of its use is provided in chapter Lyric Syllables.
The following elements provide control over the horizontal spacing of notational events, such as notes, chords, rests, etc.:
In this context, the term ‘space’ is used to mean whitespace that is required to meaningfully align multiple voices in a multi-voice texture. In DARMS these were referred to as ‘push codes’. The space element is most often used when a new voice appears on a staff mid-measure.
The space element may also be used to align material that crosses staves.
‘Space’ can be thought of as another kind of event. In fact, some refer to this concept as an ‘invisible rest’.
While ‘space’ is meaningful, ‘padding’ is non-essential whitespace that is used to shift the position of the events which follow.
The pad element is provided in order to capture software-dependent placement information when it is desirable to do so. Unless the MEI file will be used as an intermediate file format, this is usually not necessary.
Expression marks are instructions in the form of words, abbreviations, or symbols that convey aspects of performance that cannot be expressed purely through the musical notation.
All of the following elements can be considered text directives; however, MEI uses the dir element specifically for words, abbreviations, numbers, or symbols specifying or suggesting the manner of performance that are not encoded elsewhere using the more specific elements of tempo and dynam.
Examples of directives include text strings such as ‘affettuoso’, fingering numbers, or music symbols such as segno and coda symbols or fermatas over a bar line. Directives can be control elements. That is, they can linked via their attributes to other events. The starting point of the directive may be indicated by either a tstamp, tstamp.ges, tstamp.real or startid attribute, while the ending point may be recorded by either a tstamp2, dur, dur.ges or endid attribute. It is a semantic error not to specify a starting point attribute.
Tempo marks are indications through words, abbreviations, or specific metronome settings of the speed at which a piece of music is to be performed. Both instantaneous and continuous tempo markings may be encoded using this element.
Dynamics, or dynamic marks, are terms, abbreviations, and symbols that indicate the specific degrees of volume of a note, phrase, or section of music, e.g., “piano”, “forte”. Transitions from one volume level to another, e.g., “crescendo”, “diminuendo”, are also specified through dynamic marks.
Phrase marks are curved lines placed over or under notes to delineate short sections of a work that represent a unified melodic idea, analogous to a phrase in literature.
MEI maintains a distinction between phrase marks and slurs, the latter being curved lines over or under a sequence of notes indicating they are to be performed using a particular playing/singing technique, notes that should be taken in a single breath by wind instruments or played by string instruments using a single stroke of the bow. Often, a slur also indicates that the affected notes should be played in a legato manner.
Even so, it is common for both of these concepts to be referred to generically as “slurs”. Therefore, unless one is encoding music from a repertoire in which this distinction is important, the slur element should be preferred over phrase.
Ornaments are formulae of embellishment that can be realized by adding supplementary notes to one or more notes of the melody.
MEI provides a generic element for encoding an ornament symbol that is not a mordent, turn, or trill. For those common CMN ornaments, please refer to Common Music Notation Ornaments.
Ornaments can be represented as textual strings (e.g. with a Unicode symbol) or with a user defined symbol. Ornaments can be control elements. That is, they be can linked via their attributes to other events. It is a semantic error not to specify a starting point attribute with either @tstamp or @startid.
This section lists elements declared in the shared module that pertain to the encoding of prose.
A paragraph is a structural unit of a larger text. Usually, it is typographically distinct; that is, it usually begins on a new line and the first letter of the content is often indented, enlarged, or both. This element has a similar meaning as the corresponding elements in Encoded Archival Description (EAD), Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), and HTML.
In MEI, a p is used in many different situations, including transcriptional use within a titlePage or descriptive purposes as in a changeDesc.
Sometimes, it is desirable to capture the typographical qualities of a word or phrase without assigning it a special meaning. For this purpose, MEI offers the rend element, similar to TEI’s hi element. Using CSS-like values, its @rend attribute can be used to specify many typographic features, such as font style, font variants, and relative font size and weight. In addition, text decoration, direction, and enclosing ‘boxes’ may be captured. While @rend is used to record relative font size and weight, absolute values for these qualities (measured in printers points) should be specified using the @fontsize and @fontweight attibutes. In addition to commonly found typographical qualities, MEI provides the @altrend attribute for the capture of additional, user-defined rendition information.
A specialized element is furnished for the capture of titlepage information.
The titlePage element, modelled after a similar element in Encoded Archival Description (EAD), may occur within the textual matter preceding or following the musical content of the encoding. Since a diplomatic transcription of the titlepage is often necessary to accurately identify musical material contained within a source, titlePage may also be used within the metadata header as a child of the physDesc element.
The name and date elements may be used to mark up portions of a text that function as names or dates.
The name element is intended for generic applications and may be used to identify any named entity, such as a person, item, application, place, etc. The namesDates module documented in Names and Dates offers the more specific elements persName, corpName and geogName.
The num element may be used to identify any numeric information in a text. The @unit may be used to specify the unit of measurement.
This element is useful when it is necessary to provide specific information about numeric data, such as the unit of measurement or the kind of quanity described, or when it should be displayed in a special manner.
Addresses may be encoded using the address element, which itself may hold an arbitrary number of addrLine elements.
It is important to note that the address element does not hold a reference to the person or organization whose address is specified. This must be provided in a separate element, as in the following example:
<corpName>Universität Paderborn</corpName>
<address>
<addrLine>Warburger Straße 100</addrLine>
<addrLine>33098 Paderborn</addrLine>
<addrLine>Germany</addrLine>
</address>Annotations are one of the most versatile features of MEI. They are provided using the annot element.
This element may be contained by a wide range of other elements and may contain a large number of other elements. While this offers great flexibility in addressing the wide variety of textual features that might occur within an annotation, it may lead to markup that cannot be effectively processed mechanistically.
In all cases, annot provides a comment upon a feature of the encoding, but never contains textual transcription. Depending on its context, an annotation will deal with either its parent element, or, more usually, with the element(s) specified in its @plist attribute. This attribute uses URI references to link to one or more other elements using their @xml:id attribute values, as in the following example:
<note xml:id="shared.someInterestingNote"></note>
<!-- elsewhere in the document: -->
<annot plist="#shared.someInterestingNote">
<!-- additional information about this note -->
</annot>The following element is used in the encoding of bibliographic citations and references:
The bibl element may contain a mix of text and more specific elements, including the following:
These elements fall into the following categories:
The elements title, edition, series, and identifier fall into the first category as do the elements arranger, author, composer, librettist, lyricist, funder, sponsor, and respStmt. The respStmt element is provided for marking responsibility roles that cannot be recorded using more specific elements. The biblScope element also carries information of an identifying nature.
The identifier for a given item may be an International Standard Book/Music Number, Library of Congress Control Number, a publisher’s or plate number, a personal identification number, an entry in a bibliography or catalog, etc.
To classify the title according to some convenient typology, the @type attribute may be used. Sample values include: main (main title), subordinate (subtitle, title of part), abbreviated (abbreviated form of title), alternative (alternate title by which the work is also known), translated (translated form of title), uniform (collective title). The @type attribute is provided for convenience in analysing titles and processing them according to their type; where such specialized processing is not necessary, there is no need for such analysis, and the entire title, including subtitles and any parallel titles, may be enclosed within a single title element. Title parts may be encoded in title sub-elements. The name of the list from which a controlled value is taken may be recorded using the @authority attribute.
Publication and distribution data may be captured using pubPlace, publisher, distributor, and date elements directly inside bibl when the citation is unstructured. However, these elements should be grouped within imprint whenever practical.
The physical characteristics of the cited item may be described using the extent element.
Annotation of the bibliographic citation and the provision of other pertinent details are addressed by several elements. Commentary on the bibliographic item or citation is accommodated by the annot and creation elements. The annot element is provided for generic comments, while creation is intended to hold information about the context of the creation of the cited item. Terms by which the bibliographic item can be classified may be placed in genre. For letters and other correspondence, recipient captures the name of the person or organization to whom the item was addressed. The natural language(s) of the item may be recorded in one or more textLang elements. Finally, a holding institution may be documented using the repository element directly within bibl, but physLoc should be used whenever possible as a grouping mechanism for location and shelfmark information. To identify sub-units of the holding institution, repository sub-elements may be used. The name of the list from which a controlled value for the agency name is taken may be recorded using the @authority attribute.
When supplied with a @target attribute, bibl may function as a hypertext reference to an external electronic resource. In addition, other related bibliographic items may be described or referenced using the relatedItem element.
<bibl>
<genre>letter</genre>
<author>Carl Nielsen</author>
<recipient>Gustav Hetsch</recipient>
<creation>
<date isodate="1915-04-08">1915-04-08</date>
</creation>
<physLoc>
<repository>
<identifier authURI="http://www.rism.info/" authority="RISM">DK-Kk</identifier>
</repository>
<identifier>CNA IAc</identifier>
</physLoc>
<relatedItem rel="host">
<bibl xml:id="shared.bibl_d1e380372">
<title>CNB</title>
<biblScope>V/210</biblScope>
</bibl>
</relatedItem>
</bibl>Please consult Names, Dates, Numbers, Abbreviations, and Addresses and Names and Dates for more information about recording the names and dates frequently found in bibliographic citations.
In some situations it is necessary to provide references from one bibliographic item to another. For these situations, MEI offers the relatedItem element. A relatedItem may be used inside of bibl, and may either point to a different entity using its @target attribute, or may hold the related item as child.
<bibl>
<genre>letter</genre>
<author>Carl Nielsen</author>
<recipient>Gustav Hetsch</recipient>
<creation>
<date isodate="1915-04-08">1915-04-08</date>
</creation>
<physLoc>
<repository>
<identifier authURI="http://www.rism.info/" authority="RISM">DK-Kk</identifier>
</repository>
<identifier>CNA IAc</identifier>
</physLoc>
<relatedItem rel="host">
<bibl xml:id="shared.bibl_d1e380372">
<title>CNB</title>
<biblScope>V/210</biblScope>
</bibl>
</relatedItem>
</bibl>In this example, the nested relatedItem / bibl provides information about the ‘container’ where the outer bibl may be found. The kind of relation is expressed using the @rel attribute. It describes the relationship of the child bibl to the relatedItem’s parent bibl.
In these relations, the subject is always the relatedItem, and the object is always the parent of the relatedItem. Thus, a value of @rel=”preceding” indicates that the resource described within the relatedItem (or referenced by its @target attribute) precedes the bibl containing the relatedItem. Following MODS, both values of “preceding” and “succeeding” indicate a temporal order.
It is important not to confuse relatedItem with the concepts of Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR); see RelatedItem vs. FRBR.
The following attributes, provided by the att.common attribute class, are available on nearly all elements in an MEI encoding. They provide the means to identify, label, and access elements in MEI-encoded files.
The value of the @xml:id attribute serves as an identifier for an element and its content. Its value must be unique in the context of the current document and must conform to the definition of an XML Name provided by the W3C Recommendation at http://www.w3.org/TR/xml/#NT-Name. Suggestions for constructing an ID value can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR/xml/#sec-suggested-names.
The @xml:id attribute may take values similar to the following:
<!-- The following are all valid IDs. --><note xml:id="n1"></note>
<note xml:id="_n1"></note>
<note xml:id="thisIsMyFavoriteNote"></note>
<note xml:id="shared.thisIsMyFavoriteNote"></note>This is an example of an incorrectly-formulated @xml:id value:
<!-- xml:id not valid as IDs are not allowed to start with a number. --><note xml:id="1"></note>The @label and @n attributes both serve a labeling function; however, they differ in the values they allow. The @n attribute must be a single token, while @label may contain a string value that includes spaces. This makes @label useful for the capture of free-text labels, but a name or number specified with @n may be easier to process.
<!-- Example of a @label containing whitespace: --><mdiv label="Allegro moderato">…</mdiv>
<!-- Example of a processable @n attribute: -->
<measure n="42">
<!--…-->
</measure>When a reference to an external entity is not a complete URI, the @xml:base attribute can record a value against which it can be resolved into a complete, or absolute, location.
<graphic target="myImage.jpg" xml:base="http://www.mySite.org/images/"></graphic>The value of @xml:base can be inherited from an ancestor. In the following example, the values of the graphic elements’ @target attribute can be completed by the xml:base value specified for the facsimile element:
<facsimile xml:base="http://www.mySite.org/images/">
<surface>
<graphic target="myImage.jpg"></graphic>
<graphic target="myImage.tif"></graphic>
</surface>
</facsimile>See http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlbase/ for more details on xml:base.
1.1. Structural Elements 1.1.1. Document Elements 1.1.2. Music Element 1.2. Shared Musical Elements 1.2.1. Score and Parts 1.2.2. Staves and Layers 1.2.3. Basic Music Events 1.2.4. Other Events 1.2.5. Expression Marks 1.3. Shared Textual Elements 1.3.1. Paragraphs 1.3.2. Text Rendition 1.3.3. Transcription of Titlepages 1.3.4. Names, Dates, Numbers, Abbreviations, and Addresses 1.3.5. Annotations 1.3.6. Bibliographic Citations and References 1.3.7. Related Items 1.4. Common Attributes