In this paper, we propose the high-level service architecture supporting multimedia multicast. The proposed architecture specifies network-oriented and lightweight communication management, which includes group management, multiparty call control and multicast connection/multiple connections control. Many of the existing approaches handling multimedia multicast applications are dependent on specific transport technologies, such as the Internet and ATM, and lack effective communication management. On the other hand, our approach defines flexible and extensible communication management that can be applied to a variety of multimedia multicast applications, independently of transport technologies. Our architecture supports the separation of control from a terminal, which enables remote control and control mobility, so that a user can use a multicast service in a more various way. The architecture is overlaid above legacy transport networks so that the existing network protocols are used for connection control. This minimizes the modification to a legacy transport network and enhances the practicality of the architecture. In addition, terminal manager and virtual device concepts are introduced that hide the details of physical devices from an application designer. The architecture consists of several service components that effectively interact with each other on a distributed platform. To verify and evaluate our architecture, we have prototyped the high-level service architecture on a CORBA platform and analyzed the architecture using a simulation.