David Cope (see part 8 of the series) had already shown early on that it was possible to use artificial intelligence to imitate the compositional style of deceased musical greats. The next step was to take on greater challenges. To demonstrate the technical possibilities of AI, various projects have ventured to complete unfinished musical works. This part of the series “AI in the music industry” takes a closer look at some of them.
AI in the Music Industry – Part 9: Finishing the Unfinished
The most famous example for such an unfinished work is Franz Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ Symphony. Its genesis alone makes it an exciting candidate for what a complete work might have sounded like if Schubert had finished it. The facts are[1], that Schubert had been working on a symphony in B minor since the summer of 1822 and had only completed the first two movements – Allegro moderato and Andante con moto – which exist in a handwritten score with a dedication to the Steiermärkischer Musikverein, dated “Wien den 30 Octob. 1822”. Never printed or performed during Schubert’s lifetime, it was rediscovered by the Viennese conductor Johann Herbeck in May 1865 during a visit to Graz by Schubert’s friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner, who entrusted him with the original manuscript. Herbeck had the work premiered on 17 December 1865 in the large Redoutensaal of the Vienna Hofburg at a concert given by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, which was enthusiastically received. Herbeck was already dissatisfied with the lack of further movements and chose the last movement of the Third Symphony as the finale. In addition to the score, however, there were also piano sketches for the symphony, which came into the possession of Schubert’s brother Ferdinand after his death. After Ferdinand’s death in 1859, the autograph collector Nicolaus Dumba acquired the manuscript, in which a third movement entitled “Scherzo-Trio” is sketched and ends with a draft of a trio. The following lines of music are then left blank, suggesting that Schubert only temporarily interrupted work on the symphony and turned to other works – at this time he wrote both the ‘Wanderer Fantasie’ in C major and the ‘Entre-Act Music’ No. 1 in B minor to the incidental music for the play ‘Rosamunde, Princess of Cyprus’ – but then left the work unfinished.
This fired the imagination of composers to complete the ‘Unfinished’. The first known attempt dates from 1928, the year in which the International Schubert Competition was held in Vienna to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Franz Schubert’s death. On 26 June 1927, the Columbia Graphophone Company, together with the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, announced a composition competition inviting composers from all over the world to complete Schubert’s Symphony in B minor.[2] The call provoked a public outcry and fierce protests against the commercial exploitation of the Schubert commemorative year by the recording industry. As a result, the terms of entry were changed several times and the competition was eventually divided into two categories. In the first category, Schubert’s symphony was to be performed in its original orchestration; in the second category, an orchestral work in the romantic spirit of Schubert’s music was to be rewarded. The first prize was won by Kurt Atterberg for his Symphony No. 6, nicknamed the “Dollar Symphony” because of the prize money of GBP 2,000 (equivalent to US $10,000). The recognition prize of GBP 150 for the best completion of the ‘Unfinished’ was awarded to the British pianist and composer Frank Merrick. Both works had been recorded by Columbia Graphophone.[3]
Since then, there have been repeated attempts to complete Schubert’s B minor symphony, usually using the piano sketches for the Scherzo and Trio as the third movement, and the intermission music from the theatre music Rosamunde as the final movement.[4] An AI-generated version of the B minor symphony must be measured against these musicologically attempts to complete it. There was, therefore, great excitement when Chinese technology company Huawei announced on 29 January 2019 that it had completed Schubert’s masterpiece using the AI built into its Mate 20 Pro smartphone. The AI was trained with the music from the first and second movements of Schubert’s symphony and developed numerous melody suggestions for the two missing movements, which composer Lucas Cantor Santiago reviewed and selected the versions he liked best to orchestrate the two missing movements of the symphony, as explained in a promotional video from Huawei.[5] The whole process took six months, and the final result was presented on 4 February 2019 at London’s Cadogan Hall with the specially assembled ‘The English Session Orchestra’ in front of 500 invited guests.[6] There was big applause in the concert hall, but the reviews afterwards were scathing. Writing for ‘The Conversation’, Claudia Lorenzo Rubiera criticised Huawei’s experiment as artistically and aesthetically naive: “The final two movements communicate profound ignorance of autonomous art or artistic development. Grafted to provoke acclaim and applause, they are impression management at its worst.”[7] “Die Welt” ran the headline “Thank you, Huawei! Now we’d rather listen to the unfinished Schubert again”[8] and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) suspected that Huawei’s entire project was a major diversionary manoeuvre to deflect accusations that the Chinese tech company was conducting espionage in the West on behalf of the Communist Party in China.[9] Whether it was a distraction or a promotional campaign for the Mate 20 Pro, the result of Huawei completing the ‘Unfinished’ has to be considered an artistic failure.
So let us turn to another example where an unfinished work should be completed by an AI. It is little known that Ludwig van Beethoven was working on a 10th symphony. As early as July 1822, Beethoven told the Leipzig music journalist and founder of the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, Friedrich Rochlitz, that he was working on two great symphonies: “(…) I’ve been working on three other major works for a while now. A lot has already been worked out in my head. I have to get these off my chest first: two large symphonies, each different, each also different from my others, and an oratorio. And that will take a long time, because you see, I haven’t been able to get myself to write easily for some time now. I sit and think; I’ve had it for a long time: but it won’t go on paper. I dread the beginning of such great works. Once I’m in it, I’m fine (…).”[10] Musicologists Klaus Martin Kopitz and Rainer Cadenbach suggest that the two symphonies mentioned by Beethoven could be the Ninth and an already planned Tenth.[11] In any case, eight days before his death, in a letter to Ignaz Moscheles dated 18 March 1827, Beethoven mentioned that, in gratitude for the 1,000 gulden in convention coins sent to him by the Philharmonic Society in London, he would compose “(…) a new symphony, which is already sketched on my desk, or a new overture (…)”.[12] This is also confirmed by a letter from Beethoven’s secretary, Anton Schindler, to Moscheles, dated 24 March 1822. In it, the eyewitness of Beethoven’s death not only describes his last hours, but also mentions that he had a 10th symphony “under the pen (…) which will now be all the greater because he will write it for the Philharmonic Society”.[13] Finally, there is a letter from Beethoven’s close collaborator, Karl Holz, to Wilhelm von Lenz, in which he reports the following: “Beethoven played the 10th symphony in its entirety at the piano; it was also available in sketches in all its parts, but no one but he could decipher it”.[14] That this was not an insignificant announcement by Beethoven is also confirmed by the sketches for a 10th symphony and an overture entitled “BACH”, published by Anton Schindler in 1844, which the composer is said to have made in the summer of 1824.[15]
Despite these many clues, it was a sensation when, in 1983, the British musicologist Barry Cooper discovered compositional sketches in the Berlin State Library which he identified as preparatory works for the 10th Symphony.[16] Together with further sketches from 1822 to 1824, which the musicologist Sieghard Brandenburg has also attributed to the Tenth Symphony[17] Cooper undertook a reconstruction of the first movement (Andante – Allegro – Andante in E flat major) of the Tenth Symphony, which was published by Universal Edition in Vienna in 1988[18] and premiered by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Walter Weller at the Royal Festival Hall in London on 18 October 1988.[19] In the same year, the symphony was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Wyn Morris for MCA Classics (MCA-6269).[20]
However, Beethoven’s 10th Symphony was not yet complete, but the first movement was available in an elaborate orchestral version. In 2019, Deutsche Telekom commissioned the director of the Karajan Institute in Salzburg to put together a team of AI experts, musicologists and musicians to complete the symphony with the help of artificial intelligence by the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth in 2021.[21] Ahmed Elgammal, head of the ‘Art & AI Lab’ at Rutgers University, and his team was commissioned to develop an AI with his team that learns to compose like Beethoven. In an article for ‘The Conversation’, Elgammal explains the project process in detail.[22] 250 bars from the sketches that Cooper had already used in his reconstruction were the starting point for the AI, which then was trained with 10,000 compositions from Beethoven’s time. The algorithm then had to learn to derive the musical structure in Beethoven’s style from a motif or phrase. After several iterations, the AI came up with several suggestions – 2 million notes in total – for the final two movements of the symphony, The team of experts then selected the best. The Viennese composer Walter Werzowa was then given the task of orchestrating it. Also involved in the project was the musicologist Robert Levin from Harvard University, who had already completed several other unfinished works by Mozart and Bach, and the head of the research department at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, Christine Siegert.
The Beethoven Orchestra Bonn conducted by Dirk Kaftan finally presented the result on 9 October 2021 at the Telekom Center in Bonn to an audience of 750 invited guests.[23] The media response was reserved. The broadcaster BR Klassik found the result interesting, “but ‘Beethoven X’ is unlikely to make it into the concert repertoire in the future.” The conductor of the premiere, Dirk Kaftan, was subsequently quoted: “So, to cut a long story short: This is no Beethoven.” And he continues critically: “The AI processes things that have already happened. It processes the past. The question is whether it creates something original and new that captures a zeitgeist from the human soul and turns it into an unmistakable work of art – that is not answered by this project.”[24] However, the fact is that AI is now capable of creating music independently, not only imitating the style of deceased artists, but also making original compositional suggestions. Humans are still needed to make artistic judgements and competent choices. In this and similar projects, AI is still a tool that humans use to create something new.
Endnotes
[1] See Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs, “Schuberts Unvollendete. Eine Bestandsaufnahme”, 2008, accessed: 2024-03-31.
[2] Paul Rapoport’s master’s thesis entitled ‘Havergal Brian and his Symphony ‘The Gothic” describes in detail the exact course of the competition and the complicated two-stage procedure for determining the prize-winning compositions.
[3] Ibid.
[4] A recent example is the new Urtext edition published by Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs in 2015, which includes the Scherzo from the piano sketches and the ‘ No. 1 from ‘Rosamunde, Princess of Cyprus’ as the third and fourth movements. This version was performed by the Concentus Musicus Wien under the direction of Stefan Gottfried at the Vienna Musikverein in 2018 and recorded on CD. See Die Presse, “Franz Schuberts ‘Unvollendete’, vollendet”, April 29, 2018, accessed: 2024-03-31.
[5] In a Classic.fm article you can watch the video: Classic.fm, “Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ Symphony completed by artificial intelligence”, February 6, 2019, accessed: 2024-03-31.
[6] Die gesamte Sinfonie kann auf YouTube nachgehört werden: YouTube, “Franz Schubert – Symphony No.8 in B minor, D.759 (“Unfinished”) finalized by artificial intelligence”, March 18, 2019, accessed: 2024-03-31.
[7] The Conversation, “Composers are under no threat from AI, if Huawei’s finished Schubert symphony is a guide”, February 13, 2019, accessed: 2024-03-31.
[8] Die Welt, “Danke, Huawei! Jetzt hören wir lieber wieder den unfertigen Schubert”, February 7, 2019, accessed: 2024-03-31.
[9] Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “Spitzel Schuberts. Ein Kommentar von Jan Brachmann”, February 8, 2019, accessed: 2024-03-31.
[10] Beethoven made this statement during the second of Rochlitz’s three meetings with the composer in a Viennese tavern, which the journalist had visited on Franz Schubert’s advice in order to speak to Beethoven. Rochlitz had been briefly introduced to Beethoven at a first meeting with the composer’s Viennese publisher, Tobias Haslinger. Beethoven remembered the guest from Leipzig and took him to a quiet room in the tavern so that the already completely deaf composer could communicate with him using a small slate. This is how Rochlitz describes the meeting in a letter of 8 July 1822 to his friend and Leipzig music publisher Gottfried Friedrich Härtel. This letter has been published several times, including by Albert Leitzmann, 1914, Beethovens Persönlichkeit. Urteile der Zeitgenossen, second volume 1817-1827, Leipzig: Insel Verlag, pp 250-260.
[11] Klaus Martin Kopitz & Rainer Cadenbach (eds.), 2009, Beethoven aus der Sicht seiner Zeitgenossen in Tagebüchern, Briefen, Gedichten und Erinnerungen, vol 2: Lachner – Zmeskall, München: G. Henle Verlag, p 717.
[12] Ignaz Moscheles was a friend of Beethoven’s from his time in Vienna and acted as an intermediary in London between the composer and the Philharmonic Society, who had commissioned Beethoven to write the Ninth Symphony in D minor. In the composer’s letter to Moscheles, Beethoven thanks the Philharmonic Society for its financial support and for an academy that the Society organised for Beethoven in London. The original letter can be found in the digital archive of the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn: “2284. Beethoven an Ignaz Moscheles in London, Wien den 18. März 1827”, accessed: 2024-03-31.
[13] Beethovenhaus Bonn, “2286. Anton Felix Schindler an Ignaz Moscheles in London, Wien den 24. März 1827”, accessed: 2024-03-31.
[14] Cited after Hugo Riemann (ed.), 1908, Ludwig van Beethovens Leben von Alexander Wheelock Thayer auf Grund der hinterlassenen Vorarbeiten und Materialien weitergeführt von Herrmann Deiters, fifth volume (end), Leipzig: Verlag von Breitkopf und Härtel, p 333.
[15] Anton Schindler, 1844, “Aus Beethoven’s Skizzenbüchern”, in: Herrmann Hirschbach (Hg.), Musikalisch-kritisches Repertorium aller neuen Erscheinungen im Gebiete der Tonkunst, Jg. 1 (1844), pp 1-5, accessed: 2024-03-31.
[16] Barry Cooper, 1985, “Newly Identified Sketches for Beethoven’s Tenth Symphony”, Music & Letters, Vol. 66(1), January 1985, S. 19-33.
[17] Sieghard Brandenburg, 1984, “Die Skizzen zur Neunten Symphonie”, in Harry Goldschmidt (ed.), Zu Beethoven 2 – Aufsätze und Dokumente, Berlin: Verlag Neue Musik, pp 110-115.
[18] Universal Edition, “Ludwig van Beethoven: 10. Symphonie (1. Satz)”, n.d., accessed: 2024-03-31.
[19] New York Times, “Beethoven’s 10th Is Played in London”, October 20, 1988, accessed: 2024-03-31.
[20] There is a YouTube video of not only the full reconstruction of the first movement of the 10th Symphony, but also Barry Cooper explaining in detail the background to the rediscovery and the creation of a final orchestral version: YouTube, “Beethoven – Symphony No 10 (arr Cooper) Morris, LSO (1988) plus Lecture by Cooper”, March 19, 2018, accessed: 2024-03-31.
[21] Deutsche Telekom, “Beethovens Unvollendete”, December 5, 2019, accessed: 2024-03-31.
[22] Ahmet Elgammal, “How a team of musicologists and computer scientists completed Beethoven’s unfinished 10th Symphony”, The Conversation, September 24, 2021, accessed: 2024-03-31.
[23] Deutsche Telekom, “Beethoven X: Das Experiment ist vollendet”, October 11, 2021, accessed: 2024-03-31. You can listen to the 3rd movement (Scherzo. Allegro – Trio) in full on YouTube: “Beethoven X: The AI Project: III Scherzo. Allegro – Trio”, October 8, 2021, accessed: 2024-03-31.
[24] BR Klassik, “Künstlich ist nicht künstlerisch. Künstliche Intelligenz – Beethovens 10. Symphonie uraufgeführt”, October 10, 2021, accessed: 2024-03-31.
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