Comparison of MusicXML export capabilities of different scorewriters

In digital musicology, the widely adopted de facto standard for creating digital critical editions is the encoding format defined by the Music Encoding Initiative. However, the usual workflow to arrive at the desired encoding involves the use of well-established WYSIWYG music notation software.

Scores are mostly prepared in the conventional way and then exported to MusicXML format to be converted to MEI afterwards. While all programs handle the export of basic features like notes, measures, clefs and key signatures quite well, there are decided differences when it comes to more complex notational features like ornaments.

We have thoroughly investigated which export features the most popular programs offer and present here our findings.