“Symphony No. 10” by Beethoven, unfinished, completed by artificial intelligence (AI), launched on the 250th anniversary of his birth.
The project was developed by a team of composers and researchers over two years and was introduced to the public on October 9 in Bonn, Germany – Beethoven’s hometown. On YouTube, most viewers praised the music. User Sally Nylund commented: “What I am hearing is indeed Beethoven’s music.” “I love the use of the organ in the interlude. I agree with many that Symphony No. 10 contains nostalgia and respect that Beethoven had for Bach and Handel,” wrote user John Bader. Others found the product interesting but noted a lack of the subtle connections between sections that characterize Beethoven’s works.
In an article published by The Independent on October 14, Professor Ahmed Elgammal from Rutgers University (USA) – the initiator of the project – acknowledged that he knew some would disagree with the notion of art transcending algorithms and AI. However, he believes that artificial intelligence is a tool that opens the door for artists to express themselves in new ways.
Ahmed Elgammal conceived the idea of continuing Symphony No. 10 in 2019. He contacted Dr. Matthias Roeder, director of the Karajan Institute, an organization in Austria, to present his idea. Roeder assembled a research team, including Austrian composer Walter Werzowa, who was responsible for conceptualizing the work’s structure. Composer Mark Gotham was tasked with transcribing Beethoven’s sketches and processing all of his works to create the input data. Robert Levin, a musicologist at Harvard University, also participated. He is a pianist who has helped complete several pieces by Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach.
Portrait of Beethoven painted by Joseph Karl Stieler.
Professor Ahmed Elgammal stated that the project faced many challenges as AI at that time was still simple and unable to perform many complex operations. They spent considerable time “training” the AI to understand Beethoven’s compositional style, how he developed notes into symphonies, quartets, and lively sonatas. For example, the AI referenced how Beethoven constructed Symphony No. 5 using the repeating motif of four notes “short-short-short-long.” Additionally, the AI learned to connect and arrange sections while assigning instruments for different movements. They conducted several trial performances for experts and researchers before announcing the project.
Beethoven passed away in 1827, three years after completing Symphony No. 9. He had written sketches and some ideas for Symphony No. 10, but his health was deteriorating. In 1998, music researcher Barry Cooper studied 250 sketches by Beethoven, from which he identified his style to write the first and second movements of Symphony No. 10. However, this version did not gain widespread popularity.
According to Times magazine, artificial intelligence has long been associated with music, but it has only been widely applied in recent years. Since 1951, Alan Turing, a pioneer in computer science, created a machine that generated three simple melodies. In the 1990s, David Bowie created music using a digital application capable of generating random lyrics for inspiration. In 2018, Francois Pachet released a pop album composed using artificial intelligence – Hello, World. A year later, singer-songwriter Holly Herndon received acclaim for Proto – an album she arranged with an AI version of herself. However, many still believe that AI cannot create classical masterpieces. In 2016, the song Daddy’s Car, written by AI imitating The Beatles’ style, was criticized as “a jumbled mess.” In Vietnam, an AI model developed by engineer Nguyễn Hoàng Bảo Đại was launched earlier this year, capable of composing 10 songs in one second.
