I'm Teri Sekiri, and this is Scientific Americans' 60-Second Science.

Every morning at 5 o'clock, composer Walter Brzoa would sit down at his computer to anticipate

a particular daily email.

It came from six time zones away, where a team had been working all night, or all day

rather, to draft Beethoven's unfinished tenth symphony, almost two centuries after

his death.

The email contained hundreds of variations, and Brzoa listened to them all.

By nine, ten o'clock in the morning, it's like I'm already in heaven.

Brzoa was listening for the perfect tune, a sound that was unmistakably Beethoven.

But the phrases he was listening to weren't composed by Beethoven.

They were created by artificial intelligence, a computer simulation of Beethoven's creative

process.

The artificial intelligence gave me hundreds and hundreds of options.

Some of better than others, but then there is dead one which grabs you, and that was

just this beautiful process.

Ludwig von Beethoven was one of the most renowned composers in Western music history.

When he died in 1827, he left behind musical sketches and notes that hinted at a masterpiece.

There was barely enough to make out a phrase, let alone a whole symphony, but that didn't

stop people from trying.

In 1988, musicologist Barry Cooper attempted, but he didn't get beyond the first movement.

Beethoven's handwritten notes on the second and third movements are meager, not enough

to compose a symphony.

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