A few notes scribbled in his notebook are all that German composer Ludwig van Beethoven left of his Tenth Symphony before his death in 1827.
Now, a team of musicologists and programmers is racing to complete a version of the piece using artificial intelligence ahead of the 250th anniversary of his birth next year.
“The progress has been impressive, even if the computer still has a lot to learn,” said Christine Siegert, head of archives at Beethoven House in the composer’s hometown of Bonn.
Siegert said she was “convinced” that Beethoven would have approved, as he too was an innovator at the time, citing his compositions for the panharmonicon — a type of organ that reproduces the sounds of wind and percussion instruments.
The work would not affect his legacy, because it would never be regarded as part of his oeuvre, she said.
The final result of the project is to be performed by a full orchestra on April 28 in Bonn, a centerpiece of celebrations for a composer who defined the romantic era of classical music.
Beethoven, Germany’s most famous musical figure, is so loved in his homeland that a duty to prepare for the anniversary was written into the governing coalition’s agreement in 2013.
The year of celebrations begins on Monday — believed to be his 249th birthday — with the opening of his home in Bonn as a museum after extensive renovation.
Beethoven began working on the Tenth Symphony alongside his Ninth, which includes the world-famous Ode To Joy. He gave up on the Tenth, leaving only a few notes and drafts by the time he died aged 57.
In the project, machine-learning software has been fed all of Beethoven’s work and is now composing possible continuations of the symphony in the composer’s style.
Deutsche Telekom, which is sponsoring the project, hopes to use the findings to develop technology such as voice recognition.
The team said the first results a few months ago were seen as too mechanical and repetitive, but the latest AI compositions have been more promising.
Barry Cooper, a British composer and musicologist who himself wrote a hypothetical first movement for the Tenth in 1988, was more doubtful.
“I listened to a short excerpt that has been created. It did not sound remotely like a convincing reconstruction of what Beethoven intended,” said Cooper, a professor at the University of Manchester and the author of several works on Beethoven. “There is, however, scope for improvement with further work.”
Cooper warned that “in any performance of Beethoven’s music, there is a risk of distorting his intentions,” but this was particularly the case for the Tenth Symphony, as the German composer had left only fragmentary material.
Similar AI experiments based on works by Bach, Mahler and Schubert have been less than impressive.
A project this year to complete Schubert’s Eighth Symphony was seen by some reviewers as being closer to a film soundtrack than the Austrian composer’s work.
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
‘THE RED LINE’: Colombian President Gustavo Petro promised a thorough probe into the attack on the senator, who had announced his presidential bid in March Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, a possible candidate in the country’s presidential election next year, was shot and wounded at a campaign rally in Bogota on Saturday, authorities said. His conservative Democratic Center party released a statement calling it “an unacceptable act of violence.” The attack took place in a park in the Fontibon neighborhood when armed assailants shot him from behind, said the right-wing Democratic Center, which was the party of former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. The men are not related. Images circulating on social media showed Uribe Turbay, 39, covered in blood being held by several people. The Santa Fe Foundation
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
RSS