Developing traditions of music notation and performance on the Web

High level symbolic music notations and performance practices are all related to particular cultural traditions. For example, Gregorian Chant, Elizabethan Lute music, 19th century Romantic, and 20th century Avant-Garde musics all relate to different philosophies of space and time. A universal standard for music notation or its performance is therefore neither possible nor desirable. The Web should, in contrast, allow aural and written traditions to develop freely and independently. Specialists in particular traditions should be allowed to communicate efficiently with their peers, using scores and recordings which reflect those traditions, and which do not distort the subject matter. Living traditions should be allowed to develop. This paper approaches the problem by isolating and describing concepts shared by all music notations, using the architecture of a proposed, general purpose music editor as a framework. The editor uses nested levels of freely definable symbols and interchangeable software libraries to encapsulate information about each individual notation and performance tradition.