One hundred and ninety-four years after Beethoven's death, something unexpected occurred: an AI completed Beethoven’s 10th Symphony. It was performed in Beethoven’s birthplace of Bonn, Germany by the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn under the baton of Dirk Kaftan on October 9, 2021.
The extraordinary collaboration was orchestrated between music historians, musicologists, composers, and computer scientists. Dr. Ahmed Elgammal led a group of scientists in teaching artificial intelligence (AI) both Beethoven's entire body of work as well as his creative process. Beethoven did not have enough time to complete his 10th symphony because of his failing health, but he left some musical notes and several ideas jotted down as well as sketchbooks spanning most of his known works. The team came together to discuss how the fragments could be turned into a complete piece of music and how the AI would process this puzzle in a manner that would remain true to Beethoven’s process and vision. (Elgammal)
In 1988, musicologist Barry Cooper attempted to complete the first and second movements of the symphony and painstakingly brought together 250 bars of music from the sketches. He created a piece consistent with Beethoven's vision, but symphonic experts were unable to verify authenticity beyond the first movement due to the sparsity of material from Beethoven's sketches.
The gaps needed to be filled. First the AI needed to learn Beethoven's creative process — how he would take a few bars of music and thoughtfully develop them into stirring symphonies, quartets, and sonatas. AI was able to take the information presented and discover new information between nuanced connections in the data. In this case, the result was a completed 10th Symphony that would honor and mirror Beethoven’s creativity.
When a business has gaps in data, a similar solution can be applied to fill the voids in a partial story to expose previously hidden connections, and to extract insights from what was once seen as impenetrable data. Katana Graph’s all-in-one graph intelligence platform was designed from the ground up to drive innovation in exactly this type of situation, fueling a new era of insights.
This is an incredible time to appreciate all of the work being done with AI with the purpose of improving and enriching the world around us.
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