Beethoven’s Unfinished Symphony Completed After 200 Years With AI As His Aid
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At the time of his death in 1827, Ludwig von Beethoven had finished his magnum opus, his Ninth Symphony, three years ago. Although he had started working on the 10th, he wasn’t able to complete it because his health had deteriorated badly.
What he left behind wasn’t enough for anyone else to decipher his composition: a few musical sketches, which have puzzled fans and musicologists alike.
However, after all this time, it has finally happened: Beethoven’s 10th Symphony is finally finished, and set for an October release date. In fact, it will be on October 9, the same day as a world premiere performance that will take place in Bonn, Germany.
This is thanks to the two years of effort put in by a group of music historians, musicologists, composers and computer scientists. Of course, Playform AI, the machine, deserves some credit too.
In a blog post written by Ahmed Elgammal, the leader of the AI team, it’s detailed how the process unfolded. After initial hours of poring through a stack of old sketchbooks belonging to Beethoven that included most of his known works, the task was split between the “human side and the machine side.”
The composers and musicians among the team attempted to piece together the sketches the famed composer left behind, attempting to understand his intentions.
Meanwhile, the group in charge of the AI was tasked with giving the machine a creative process: how to take a short musical phrase and grow it into something more, just like he would’ve done himself.
An example of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is given: it was constructed simply of a basic four-note motif.
“The to-do list grew: We had to teach the AI how to take a melodic line and harmonise it,” Elgammal recalls. “The AI needed to learn how to bridge two sections of music together. And we realised the AI had to be able to compose a coda, which is a segment that brings a section of a piece of music to its conclusion.”
After the first few minutes of sheet music had been composed by the AI, a small test concert was given to a small group of journalists, music scholars, and Beethoven experts. When asked to point out where Beethoven’s phrases ended and the AI kicked in, they couldn’t.
This proved that the project was on the right track, and the team continued to work on the rest of the piece, eventually coming to two movements—more than 20 minutes each—to comprise the finished piece.
“We anticipate some pushback to this work,” writes Elgammal. “Those who will say that the arts should be off-limits from AI and that AI has no business trying to replicate the human creative process.”
But he explains that AI isn’t a replacement for art. Instead, it’s a tool: “one that opens doors for artists to express themselves in new ways.”
As he notes, the project, although utilizing AI, wouldn’t have been able to take place without humans in the form of the team involved. “It took an immense amount of work—and, yes, creative thinking—to accomplish this goal.”
[via DownToEarth, image via Shutterstock]
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