MAIL ONLINE: Roll over, Beethoven! Artificial intelligence will be used to complete composer's unfinished Tenth Symphony to mark 250th anniversary of his birth

Description

Barry Cooper, a British composer and musicologist who himself wrote a hypothetical first movement for the Tenth Symphony in 1988, was more doubtful.

'I listened to a short excerpt that has been created. It did not sound remotely like a convincing reconstruction of what Beethoven intended,' said Cooper, a professor at the University of Manchester and the author of several works on Beethoven.

'There is, however, scope for improvement with further work.'

Cooper warned that 'in any performance of Beethoven's music, there is a risk of distorting his intentions' but this was particularly the case for the Tenth Symphony as the German composer had left only fragmentary material.