Lifting the "Curse of the Ninth:" How AI is Helping to Finish Unfinished Symphonies

Composing a symphony involves many parts to harmonize and rules to follow. When the Beethoven project began in 2019, "Most AI available at the time couldn't continue an uncompleted piece of music beyond a few additional seconds," Elgammal explained in an article for The Conversation. Fortunately, Beethoven left more than 50 sketches behind that alluded to a complete picture of this symphony. Though the sketches can serve as excellent input for the AI, they are fragmentary and almost indecipherable due to his idiosyncratic handwriting. To truly capture the essence of Beethoven's composition, the team also brought on composers, musicologists, and musical historians, intending to teach the AI "both Beethoven's entire body of work and his creative process," Elgammal writes.