The transition from the printed score and static PDF files to the structured symbolic representation of music marks a significant development in musicology. This paper focuses on the Music Encoding Initiative (MEI) standard and the research possibilities it offers. As a markup language based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and inspired by the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) standard, MEI encodes musical content semantically and provides for a digital critical apparatus, internal references to multiple sources and versions, links to the original documents, computational analysis, and interoperability with library models. Crucially for the researcher, the same encoded file can feed a critical edition, an analytical description, and print and online publication, while the source is kept separate from its interpretation and the sustainability of the data is ensured independently of any software. As a case study, the paper presents the digital critical edition of Mikis Theodorakis’s Sonatina for piano (1955). The text was encoded in MEI and is rendered online through a JavaScript library, in an interactive environment with custom code for displaying and playing selected passages. It thus shows how MEI captures with precision even a multi-layered, corrected document, together with the open questions raised by the research, turning the score into an interactive environment for research, publishing and teaching.
Presentation. The paper is presented in Greek at the 18th Interdepartmental Musicological Conference, organised by the Department of Music Studies of the University of Ioannina under the auspices of the Hellenic Musicological Society (Arta, 30 October – 1 November 2026), in the session “Digital archives and libraries” on Sunday 1 November. Conference programme (in Greek).