Performed Music Ontology

The Performed Music Ontology was developed as an extension of the BIBFRAME ontology for generalized bibliographic description to provide more specialized modeling in the performed music domain. It is aimed at both general and archival collections of performed music, whether sound recordings or video. While initially intended only for performed music resources, parts of PMO, particularly the modeling for medium of performance, for works, and for various music-centric identifiers, was soon found to be equally applicable to notated music resources.

The ontology was first developed as a sub-project of the Mellon-funded Link Data for Production grant, and was the result of a partnership between Stanford (for LD4P), the Music Library Association (MLA), and the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC). Group members included representatives from each group and from the Library of Congress Recorded Sound and Music Divisions. The ontology also included six associated specialized vocabularies:

• Audio Carrier vocabulary • Disc Cutting vocabulary • Encoding Format vocabulary • Medium Part Type vocabulary • Playing speed vocabulary • Tonal Center Vocabulary

Performed Music Ontology 2.0

After extensive testing and discussions with the Library of Congress, a smaller group, representing LC, MLA & Stanford, produced a simplified version of PMO. The new version reduces complexity in the modeling of medium of performance, while also introducing a new property with associated vocabulary for ensemble type; changes the subclasses for Events to a vocabulary list for to simplify additions; removes modeling for thematic catalog numbers (deemed useful but outside the focus of the ontology); and drops some of the new vocabularies, since they are new duplicated in ID.loc.gov. Vocabularies are now included for the following:

Audio Carrier vocabulary • Ensemble size vocabulary • Event type vocabulary • Medium Component Qualifier Vocabulary

-- Human readable form of PMO 2.0 at: http://performedmusicontology.org/ontologies/PMO.html

Update, August 2025

PMO is now being gradually incorporated into BIBFRAME proper and will eventually be deprecated as a standalone ontology extension. A table showing the equivalents in BF proper will made available as soon as they are stable.