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Beethoven 10 - The Artificial Intelligence Project Brings Beethoven's Unfinished Tenth Symphony to Life

Feb. 16, 2022

A team of musicians and scientists have collaborated on a captivating project to complete the third and fourth movements of Beethoven's unfinished Tenth Symphony. Using artificial intelligence, composer Walter Werzowa and Ahmed Elgammal, a professor at Rutgers University of computer science and director of the Art and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, created a completed version of the Tenth Symphony, the score of which is available for hire from Schott Music. The duo began their process of completing a masterpiece by teaching AI about the music of Beethoven, much like a student of composition might learn how to identify and compose music in Beethoven's style.


(Beethoven X: The AI Project: III Scherzo. Allegro - Trio (Official Video)
| Beethoven Orchestra Bonn)

In an interview with National Public Radio (NPR), Dr. Elgammal explained,

"The way AI generates music or learns about music is very similar, for example, to the way the construction of an email operates. The email tries to guess what will be your next word. In music, we are trying to teach the AI how to predict what is the next note. By looking at multiple different musical works, the AI can fundamentally learn how to do that."

First, the team taught the AI music that would have been available to Beethoven at the time (music by Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and others), and then exposed it to all of Beethoven's works, so that the process could become even more defined and closer to what Beethoven himself might have written. The process was not completely computerized. In an interview with Scientific American, Walter Werzowa explained that the AI team sent him hundreds of daily computer simulations and he would listen to them and select the ones that were most suitable. He noted, "There were hundreds of options, and some are better than others. But then there is that one which grabs you, and that was just a beautiful process."

The Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, under the baton of Dirk Kaftan, premiered the new work in October 2021 at the Forum der Telekom in Bonn. A video of their performance may be found here. 

In the aforementioned interview with Scientific American, Walter Werzowa invites the audience to experience the work and form their own opinion, saying, "I dare to say that nobody knows Beethoven as well as the AI, did—as well as the algorithm. I think music, when you hear it, when you feel it, when you close your eyes, it does something to your body. Close your eyes, sit back and be open for it, and I would love to hear what you felt after."

View the score here.

Ludwig van Beethoven/Walter Werzowa
Beethoven 10 - The AI Project (2020-2021)
for orchestra
III. Scherzo - Trio - Allegro
IV. Adagio maestoso - Tempo di menuetto
Pic.2.2.2.3-4.2.3.0-timp-perc-org-str
22'

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