The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities
<http://mith.umd.edu/> and the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library
<https://www.lib.umd.edu/mspal> invite you to participate in the 2018 Music
Encoding Conference with the theme: “Encoding and Performance”.

*Date*: 23 – 24 May 2018 (with pre-conference workshops on 22 May and an
‘un-conference’ day on 25 May)
*Location*: University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA
*Deadline for Proposals*: 5 November 2017 (midnight UK time)
*Notification of Acceptance*: 4 December 2017
*Keynote speakers*: Anna Kijas (Boston College)
                                John Rink (University of Cambridge)

Music encoding is a critical component of the emerging fields of digital
musicology, digital editions, symbolic music information retrieval, and
others. At the centre of these fields, the Music Encoding Conference has
emerged as an important cross-disciplinary venue for theorists,
musicologists, librarians, and technologists to meet and discuss new
advances in their fields.

The Music Encoding Conference is the annual focal point for the Music
Encoding Initiative community (http://music-encoding.org), but members from
all encoding and analysis communities are welcome to participate.

For the first time, the annual conference will have a theme: “Encoding and
Performance”. We welcome in particular submissions that theorize the
relationship between music encoding and performance practice, describe
experiments (failed or successful) in creating digital dynamic scores,
propose ways of using encoded music for pedagogical purposes related to
performance, or imagine future interconnections. The conference will be
held at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, and therefore, we
encourage presentations that include a performance component or
demonstration.

As always, other topics are welcome. Suggested topics include, but are not
limited to:

   - music encoding for performance research and practice
   - music encoding as a theoretical approach for research
   - methodologies for encoding, music editing, description and analysis
   - rendering of symbolic music data in audio and graphical forms
   - relationships between symbolic music data, encoded text, and facsimile
   images
   - capture, interchange, and re-purposing of music data and metadata
   - evaluation and control of quality of music data and metadata
   - ontologies, authority files, and linked data in music encoding and
   description
   - music encoding and symbolic music information retrieval
   - additional topics relevant to music encoding, editing, and description

Authors are invited to upload their submission for review to our Conftool
website, which will be available shortly:
https://www.conftool.net/music-encoding2018. The deadline for all
submissions is *5 November 2017 (midnight UK time)*.

Abstracts (in PDF format only) should be submitted through ConfTool, and
the submitted PDF must anonymize the authors’ details.

*Types of proposals*

*Paper and poster proposals*. Provide an abstract of no more than 1000
words, excluding relevant bibliographic references (no more than ten).
Please also include information about presentation needs, particularly if
you are planning a performance demonstration.

*Panel discussion proposals*, describing the topic and nature of the
discussion and including short biographies of the participants, must be no
longer than 2000 words. Panel discussions are not expected to be a set of
papers which could otherwise be submitted as individual papers.

*Proposals for half- or full-day pre-conference workshops*, to be held on
May 22nd, should include the workshop’s proposed duration, as well as its
logistical and technical requirements.

Friday May 25th is planned as an un-conference day, self-organized by the
participants and open for anyone who wants to initiate a discussion on a
topic mentioned above.

Additional details regarding registration, accommodation, etc. will be
announced on the conference web page (
http://music-encoding.org/community/conference).

If you have any questions, please e-mail [log in to unmask]

*Program Committee*

   - Karen Desmond, chair (Brandeis University)
   - Johanna Devaney (Ohio State University)
   - David Fiala (Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, Tours)
   - Andrew Hankinson (Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford)
   - Maja Hartwig (University of Paderborn)

*Organizing Committee*

   - Amanda Lee-Barber (The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center)
   - Stephen Henry, co-chair (Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library)
   - Raffaele Viglianti, co-chair (Maryland Institute for Technology in the
   Humanities)
   - Leighann Yarwood (The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center)

Karen Desmond, Assistant Professor of Music
Department of Music, Brandeis University