Can Beethoven be replicated by computer?

[Schenkerian]

https://theconversation.com/how-a-te...ymphony-168160

[Peter]

Oh here we go again, as if the Barry Cooper thing wasn't bad enough. Honestly why can't they just leave things and except the fact that Beethoven only wrote 9 completed symphonies, anything else no matter how cleverly put together is nothing more than a pastiche in the style of Beethoven. So to palm it off as his 10th as has been done before (so this must he his 2nd 10th)is in my view completely disrespectful and of no lasting value. I think this is true even of a work such as Elgar's 3rd which was far more substantially sketched than the Beethoven. Elgar made it quite clear in his dying wishes that no attempt should be made to complete the work - did they listen?

[Arciom Nesterovich]

No! I think and I hope that it is impossible to do that! The only thing that can happen is only that we will have all scores of classic music in electronic form (like on musescore- https://musescore.com/sheetmusic?gen...=classic+music)

[Schenkerian]

Oh here we go again, as if the Barry Cooper thing wasn't bad enough. Honestly why can't they just leave things and except the fact that Beethoven only wrote 9 completed symphonies, anything else no matter how cleverly put together is nothing more than a pastiche in the style of Beethoven. So to palm it off as his 10th as has been done before (so this must he his 2nd 10th)is in my view completely disrespectful and of no lasting value. I think this is true even of a work such as Elgar's 3rd which was far more substantially sketched than the Beethoven. Elgar made it quite clear in his dying wishes that no attempt should be made to complete the work - did they listen?

Completely agree. But the tech nerds always like to prove the unassailable nature of their ingenuity. For some reason Beethoven has come under incredible pressure of late; through the culture wars and now this!! He's a totemic figure of western European cultural achievement and therefore at the vanguard of the Enlightenment and everything which came afterwards. So it's not just his musical genius.

For me the incomplete work/s of a composer who has died during their creation speak to our shared humanity. A great musical caesura; an incomplete iteration which is permanent - and is symbolic of the vast majority of us, cut down at a time not of our choosing. That moment of silence in the middle of something is intrinsically powerful and actually gives 'voice' to that fact. Bach and his Art of Fugue, Beethoven and his unfinished Tenth - just to name two - bear witness to transient and capricious mortality.

Leave them all alone!!