Kimon Vogt, Zach Murray, William Tong
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Source: https://xkcd.com/1875/
It was a crisp, autumn afternoon, October, 1997. Students, professors, and music enthusiasts gathered at the University of Oregon for a Bach recital, excited for an hour of cerebral music and Baroque discussion. Esteemed pianist Winifred Kerner performed three pieces for the captivated audience.
Only one was a true Bach.
In a musical showdown not dissimilar to the famous chess match between Gary Kasperov and chess machine Deep Blue, or the more recent headliner pitting Go master Lee Sedol against DeepMind’s AlphaGo, the Bach concert was organized as a competition between a human composer and his machine opponent. Professor Steve Larson of the UO music department challenged EMI (”Experiments in Musical Intelligence,” pronounced like “Emmy”) to the contest. Larson, a Bach expert and music composer, took offense to the notion that a machine could produce any composition approaching that of a human’s, much less the master Bach himself. His colleague, Professor David Cope of UC Santa Cruz and the author of EMI, politely disagreed.
The contest rules were simple. Three pieces would be performed:
The audience of music scholars, professionals, and students would listen to each piece without knowledge of its authorship, then vote on which was which. The results were striking.
In a public musical showdown, Professor Steve Larson challenged the AI algorithm EMI to compose music. The audience then voted on each piece’s authorship. Source: https://www.google.com/doodles/celebrating-johann-sebastian-bach, Google Doodle