(bloggery tells me I can't post a comment... so here's my entry)
I found that RealOne fetched a plugin for .mid files and played it with no problem. What it puts me most in mind of is the work of Conlon Nancarrow, whose medium of choice was piano rolls. I put a link to material about him in my log file last week: A Sense of Place: The Life and Work of Conlon Nancarrow 30-minute PRI program from archive.org ...and now of course I'll have to bring in an example or two.
What a great question in paragraph 2. The writer to whom I would point for a comment on this is Douglas Hofstadter (if y'all don't know about Gödel Escher Bach you really should ... see the A9.com search here for more).