A Mimic, Not a Mozart

Earlier this year a computer program called EMI (pronounced emmy) completed a symphony that some musically literate ears swore had been penned by Mozart. But critics, sounding almost threatened, have been dismissive. “Without having heard one note that it has produced,” fumed music critic Michael Tumelty, “I am convinced that this (presumably) very expensive toy is nothing more than a heap of junk. . . . Even as an educational tool it is worthless as it will not--cannot--engage the musical intellect of a student.”

Tumelty is mistaken, for EMI (short for Experiments in Musical Intelligence) is already getting job offers from the commercial music industry and it promises to help students identify the distinct orchestral colors of a composer or the musical nuances of an era.

Still, EMI’s creator, UC Santa Cruz composer David Cope, is off the mark in boasting that “EMI’s Mozart is better than 99% of non-Mozart classical music.”

Yes, EMI is an impressive device--able to analyze a musical score (noting which fragments begin a phrase, for instance, and which merely serve as decoration) and then to arrange a new score based on its knowledge of musical grammar and syntax. But EMI remains just a device.

Like a visionless Hollywood producer who reassembles the patterns and sequences of a cinema masterpiece, EMI might be able to imitate art, but Mozart it isn’t, and, we humans must hope, never will be.