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Back in 2004, Will Smith asked a robot, in the movie ‘I Robot’, “Can a robot write a symphony or turn a canvas into a beautiful work of art?”, to which the robot replied “Can you?”
For a few months now the phenomenon of Artificial Intelligence has been present in many of our conversations, on television and in the press. Little by little we are discovering the possibilities offered by this new tool that will revolutionise, if it hasn’t already, the panorama of creativity. The art world is on a war footing, applications that develop completely new images following dictated parameters, offer very good results. These images, which can be in painting or comic format, imitating a specific style, are increasingly difficult to distinguish from art created by humans. The ethical dilemma that it poses for us is significant, but what about the world of music? Is technology so advanced that it can fool our ears? In the field of classical music, will it be as difficult?
We have some examples of the application of AI to the world of classical music right now. In this article we tell you about some projects that are already underway that will surely surprise you.
Beethoven’s Tenth
Yes, Beethoven seems to have started writing a tenth symphony, but he never finished it. In fact, only a few fragments are preserved and it cannot be guaranteed that all the musical material would form part of a single work. In any case, the idea of finishing an unfinished work is tempting for other later composers and during the following years some authors have tried with varying degrees of success. One of the best-known is that of musicologist Barry Cooper. In 1988 he rewrote the first movement in the form of the Andante. Recordings have been made such as the one that can be heard here:
And of course, with the advent of Artificial Intelligence, its application to this field has not been long in coming. In 2020, the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth was celebrated. Due to the pandemic, this “new” work completed with the help of technology could not be released until the following year. The German company Telekom organised a committee of experts and specialists in classical music, musicologists, composers and computer scientists and dedicated themselves to “training” said Artificial Intelligence with other works by Beethoven himself and with compositions by contemporary authors. In this way it is possible to teach the machine to make decisions based on its own learning and make a version of the symphony number 10. In this recording you can listen, even looking in the comments of the video you can know what parts are Beethoven’s original score.
Bach vs the Algorithm
Johann Sebastian Bach has been another composer who has been the object of experimentation with this technology. A project called DeepBach is capable of composing choral cantatas in the style of the Baroque composer. As in the previous case, it is all about training the machine. In this case it was done with 352 chorales composed by Bach and later transposed to other keys. AI is able to recognize the harmonies in 80% of this database. Here you can listen to an example:
But, years ago, another program began to take an interest in learning Bach’s musical patterns, and in investigating whether humans are capable of distinguishing and valuing a real work by the composer, and one created by machines. For this, a concert with three works was performed, the first was a very little-known composition by Bach, the second was a composition made by a human imitating Bach’s style and the third was directly a completely artificial creation using an algorithm trained by a composer. Listeners could not distinguish which piece was created by the machine. We can also listen to an example of this experiment and play the game with a friend:
Are machines creative?
Apart from the mere fact of creating a work, be it musical or artistic, the legal framework is subject to a series of debates, concepts will have to be considered. Public institutions themselves are investing money in projects on the subject and some important associations have come to recognize some rights to these creative robots.
We are talking about the AIVA project, a musical composition tool financed with European funds. Amazingly it can be integrated into existing video games and offer music as the action in the game progresses. Within SACEM, the French professional association that regulates copyright, AIVA is considered the first “Virtual Artist”.
The future is the present
Surely, at the date of publication of this text, even more programs have been created capable of playing with these parameters and with the need to experiment in the field of virtual creation. For now, we leave you with a small toy. In this google doodle you can harmonise your own melody in 4 voices. Thus, we can all feel like Bach for just a moment.
https://www.google.com/doodles/celebrating-johann-sebastian-bach
