Classical Considerations: An AI Symphony?
Capabilities
21st century AI demonstrates its reach in several distinct ways: Programs such as OpenAI’s Jukebox or AIVA can convincingly mimic the style of a chosen composer, generating orchestral scores in seconds. The completion of Beethoven’s unfinished 10th Symphony, for example, reveals how seamlessly these systems can extend a fragment into a full work. Other tools allow the user to type a simple request, “a Christmas piece in the baroque style,” and receive a score that can then be refined with human oversight.
The possibilities extend beyond mimicry. Code-based systems such as ChucK generate algorithmic compositions, while sampling engines create orchestral textures from vast sound libraries. AI can take a sketch on guitar and output an arrangement for horns, or pair back an orchestral score into a single violin. Even the concert stage has felt AI’s presence: live visuals responding to musical cues, spontaneous beats during orchestral performance, and, most audaciously, pianist AyseDeniz Gokcin playing Chopin alongside AI-Chopin, with audiences largely unable to tell which was which.
Concerns
Yet the sheen of technical accomplishment conceals deeper questions. Violinist Cho-Liang Lin remarks that AI music lacks the “distinctive voice and cultural context that make human composition powerful.” What results, reports Mr. Cho-Liang, is technically accurate but spiritually vacant.
While some are concerned with the artistic ramifications of this new technology, others are troubled by ethics and economics. Because AI systems are trained on copyrighted works without consent, many fear that intellectual property is being violated on a massive scale. Composer Max Richter has suggested that AI music may already be circulating in the charts without notice. Meanwhile, musicians such as Mark Henry Phillips, who composes for film and commercials, describe an “existential crisis” on realizing that AI could replicate their work in minutes for free.
In the background of many of these critiques is the idea that AI does not create so much as recombine: It produces music that can sound eerily familiar, even beautiful, but not genuinely new. Consequently, its products may serve functional needs, but they lack the human conviction and intention that is essential to producing art.
Collaboration
Despite the many misgivings in the industry, many musicians are not retreating but reimagining. Composer Clarice Assad draws on AI concepts as inspiration but ultimately writes her pieces entirely from her “very human brain.” Multimedia artist X.A. Li finds AI’s limitations fertile ground for exploring technology’s failures and quirks.
Still others, like Zubin Kanga, welcome AI as a creative partner that can supply textures, rhythmic patterns, or even handle mundane administrative tasks, leaving more time for genuine artistry. Composer Jenny Wei perhaps best summarizes the balance: because AI merely recombines the past, the task of innovation still belongs to humans. AI may widen the palette of possibilities, but a human desire is still needed to paint with them.
The Unresolved Question
What emerges is a paradox. AI can convincingly arrange notes into the likeness of great masters, but expert humans still report a lack of spiritual depth in the algorithms’ outputs. Additionally, the hunger for live performance, for music that carries the weight of biography and culture, remains undiminished. So long as listeners turn to Beethoven not for his chord progressions but for his humanity, it seems there will be a call for human composers and fresh, human, compositions.
-Matthew Young