Experts to use AI to finish Beethoven's unfinished 10th symphony

An international team of musicologists, the pianist Robert Levin and computer experts are to use Beethoven's fragmentary notes for his unfinished 10th symphony to complete the work using artificial intelligence.

The new symphony is to have its premiere in Bonn on April 28, Deutsche Telekom, the company that initiated the project, confirmed to dpa.

The Bonn-based Beethoven Orchestra plans to perform the work to mark 250 years since Beethoven was born in the city.

The team does not have a lot to go on. Beethoven left only sketchy notes for the work, but according to a report in the Sunday edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, the team aims to train an algorithm to complete the missing sections in Beethoven's style.

They are unable at this stage to say what might emerge. "The algorithm is unpredictable and surprises us anew every day," project coordinator Matthias Roeder, the director of the Salzburg-based Karajan Institute, told the newspaper.

"It's like a small child exploring Beethoven's world," Roeder added.

Perhaps the most famous unfinished work, Schubert's 10th symphony in D major underwent "completion" by a computer financed by China's Huawei and premiered in London in February.