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      David Cope, Godfather of A.I. Music, Is Dead at 83

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      His EMI algorithm, an early form of artificial intelligence that he developed in the 1980s, prompted searching questions about the limits of human creativity.David Cope, a composer and pioneer in the field of algorithmic composition, who in the 1980s developed a computer program for writing music in the style of Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and other Classical masters, died on May 4 at his home in Santa Cruz, Calif. He was 83.The cause was congestive heart failure, his son Stephen Cope said.Before the proliferation of A.I. music generators, before the emergence of Spotify and the advent of the iPod, before Brian Eno had even coined the term “generative music,” Mr. Cope had already figured out how to program a computer to write classical music.It was 1981 and, struggling with writer’s block after being commissioned to compose an opera, he was desperate for a compositional partner. He found one in a floppy disk.The process was straightforward but tedious. Mr. Cope started by quantifying musical passages from his own work, rendering them as numbers in a database that could be analyzed by a pattern-identifying algorithm he created. The algorithm would then reassemble the “signatures” — Mr. Cope’s name for the patterns it found — into new combinations, and he would convert those combinations into a score.It wasn’t the first time someone had used a computer to create music. In 1957, Lejaren Hiller and Leonard Isaacson had employed a five-ton supercomputer at the University of Illinois to compose “Illiac Suite,” widely considered to be the first computer-generated score. But Mr. Cope’s program took things a step further: By scanning and reproducing unique signatures, his algorithm could essentially replicate style.After years of troubleshooting and fine-tuning, the program, known as Experiments in Musical Intelligence, was able to produce a full opera in a matter of hours. EMI, or Emmy, as Mr. Cope affectionately called it, was officially born. It was one of the earliest computer algorithms used to generate classical music.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hear the Sound of a New Generation of South Korean Musicians

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      Unsuk Chin, the curator of the Seoul Festival in Los Angeles, shares music by some of her favorite young composers and performers.“Compare Korea to China or Russia,” the composer Unsuk Chin said in a recent interview. “If you think how small the country is, it’s amazing how many talented musicians are coming out.”South Korean artists are prominent on classical music’s most prestigious stages. The young pianists Seong-Jin Cho and Yunchan Lim sell out Carnegie Hall. The conductor Myung-whun Chung was recently named the next music director of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Chin’s new opera, “The Dark Side of the Moon,” premiered in Hamburg in May.Now, to explore South Korea’s creative output, the Los Angeles Philharmonic is presenting the Seoul Festival from Tuesday through June 10.It is the latest in a series of themed Philharmonic events, including dives into Iceland and Mexico. Around 2018, the orchestra and its artistic leader at the time, Chad Smith, asked Chin to help plan a South Korean iteration, but the plans were derailed by the pandemic. About half of the original programming has made it intact onto this year’s concerts.“I really wanted to present the youngest generation of composers, conductors and musicians,” said Chin, 63.That generation has emerged from what she called “a very long cultural tradition.” The country’s embrace of Western musical culture began around the turn of the 20th century, and a Western-style compositional tradition took hold with figures like Isang Yun (1917-95), who wrote avant-garde music for Western instruments — but with a style that attempted to translate old-school Korean techniques.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Guy Klucevsek, Multi-Genre Accordion Virtuoso, Is Dead at 78

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      He elevated his instrument’s often-maligned reputation with deft musicianship, and by writing and commissioning a wide range of music.Guy Klucevsek, a masterly accordion player who developed an eclectic body of work for his beloved, if sometimes mocked, instrument that expanded its repertoire well beyond polkas and other traditional fare, died on May 22 at his home on Staten Island. He was 78.His wife and only immediate survivor, Jan (Gibson) Klucevsek, said the cause was pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer.Praise for Mr. Klucevsek (pronounced kloo-SEV-ek) typically noted that he had elevated the profile of the accordion beyond the realms of beer halls and “The Lawrence Welk Show.”Writing in The Village Voice in 2015 about a series of performances by Mr. Klucevsek in the East Village, Richard Gehr noted that, “having mastered the instrument in virtually all of its classical, modern, jazz and international manifestations,” Mr. Klucevsek “has extended it into another dimension altogether.”Mr. Klucevsek performed with the dancer Claire Porter at the Kitchen in Manhattan in 2000.Hiroyuki Ito/Getty ImagesHe recorded more than 20 albums, composed dozens of pieces and commissioned others, in multiple genres. He accompanied the performance artist Laurie Anderson on her 1994 album, “Bright Red,” and collaborated with the dancer Maureen Fleming on “B. Madonna,” a 2013 multimedia piece based on the myth of Persephone.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Vienna’s Musical Message to Aliens: One, Two, Three. One, Two, Three.

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      Voyager craft have carried galaxies of information to and from space since 1977. Earthlings in Vienna are finally correcting one cultural omission.What would aliens make of the waltz?That was the big question on Saturday evening while the Vienna Symphony Orchestra performed Johann Strauss’s world-renowned “Blue Danube” waltz, as a 35-meter antenna in Cebreros, Spain, simultaneously transmitted a recording of it into space.The Vienna Tourist Board, which organized the event at the Museum of Applied Arts in collaboration with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the European Space Agency, said beaming the music into the cosmos was an effort to correct the record, as it were.In 1977, when the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft left the Earth with two copies of the Golden Record, which contains images, sounds and music from Earth, Strauss’s “Blue Danube” waltz did not make the cut. This was a mistake, according to Vienna’s tourism board, which is celebrating Strauss’s 200th birthday this year.After all, Strauss was the 19th-century equivalent of a pop star. According to Tim Dokter, the director of artistic administration for the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, back then, each composition for the waltz was like a hot new single. “People would wait for it, like, ‘Oh, a new waltz dropped today,’” Dokter said. “It was something new to dance to, like a new techno song.”With Voyager 1 already more than 15 billion miles from Earth, the farthest of any object humans have launched into the universe, there’s no way to make changes to the Golden Record. Instead, the “Blue Danube” waltz — traveling as an electromagnetic wave at the speed of light — will overtake the spacecraft and continue to soar into deep space.Will aliens be able to access the recording?“If aliens have a big antenna, receive the waves, convert them into music, then they could hear it,” said Josef Aschbacher, the director general of the European Space Agency.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      These Fans Love ‘Pride & Prejudice’ a Billion Times Over

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      “Ladies and gentlemen,” a voice announced over speakers, “please welcome world-renowned pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet!”A roar erupted from hundreds of people dressed in their Regency-inspired finest: tailcoats and dresses with puffed shoulders, costume jewelry and ringlet-curled hair. They crowded around a small Steinway piano to the side of a makeshift stage, whose backdrop was like a billboard: a purple expanse with the image of Keira Knightley in a bonnet and the text “Pride & Prejudice: Twentieth Anniversary.”Roger Kisby for The New York TimesIt was a Comic Con for the Jane Austen set, an enormous party thrown by Focus Features for one of its most beloved films, Joe Wright’s 2005 adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice.” Inside the Viennese Ballroom at the Langham Huntington in Pasadena, Calif., fans of the movie recently gathered for the rare opportunity to hear Thibaudet perform Dario Marianelli’s soundtrack.Thibaudet, dressed in custom Vivienne Westwood designed for the occasion, took his seat at the piano and began to play “Dawn,” the tone-setting theme from the start of the film, in which a freely repeating note gives way to an instantly endearing melody over gentle waves of arpeggios. A hush swept through the room, and people held up their phones to record. Two friends held each other and cried; one took a video as the other wiped away her tears.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Charles Wadsworth, Pianist and Champion of Chamber Music, Dies at 96

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      As the founder, director and genial host of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, he helped drive the chamber music boom of the 1970s.Charles Wadsworth, a pianist who parlayed his Southern charm and his passion for chamber music into a career as the founder, director and host of important chamber series — including the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York — and whose work helped propel the chamber music boom that began in the 1970s, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 96.His death, at a rehabilitation center, was confirmed by his wife, Susan.During his two decades as director of the Chamber Music Society, Mr. Wadsworth was the face of the organization, likely at any time to stride onto the stage of Alice Tully Hall with a broad grin, tousled blond hair and a boyish gait and offer folksy introductions to the music at hand.“I discovered very early that when people laugh, they relax,” Mr. Wadsworth told an interviewer in 2014. “They may be at a chamber music concert for the first time, or they may be unfamiliar with the repertory, but my feeling was that if I could get them relaxed, they would be open to listening, and to letting the music happen to them, rather than worrying about whether they understand it. And that seemed to work very well.”He also performed with the society, playing the piano, harpsichord or even the organ in staples of its repertory as well as some of the oddities he found while assembling the society’s programs — works like Anton Arensky’s Suite No. 1 for Two Pianos, François Couperin’s “Le Parnasse, ou L’Apothéose de Corelli” or Jan Zelenka’s Trio Sonata for Two Oboes, Bassoon and Continuo. But since the society’s roster included pianists who by Mr. Wadsworth’s own admission were more accomplished, he often deferred to them.His real accomplishments took place behind the scenes. Not least was the creation of the society itself, an organization meant to explore the breadth of the chamber music repertory, regardless of the instrumental (or vocal) combinations required. Mr. Wadsworth assembled a core group of “artist members” — string, wind and keyboard players with active careers, who would commit to performing with the society throughout the season — alongside guest musicians, who would expand the instrumental possibilities and bring an extra measure of star power.Mr. Wadsworth often performed with the Chamber Music Society. He played piano alongside the flutist Paula Robison, the violinist Jaime Laredo and the cellist Fred Sherry at Alice Tully Hall in 2009.JB Reed for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Waiting for Dudamel, the New York Philharmonic Is Doing Fine

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      Between music directors this season, the orchestra has been sounding fresh, engaged and more cohesive.The New York Philharmonic is flying free.Its former music director, Jaap van Zweden, left last summer. Its next, Gustavo Dudamel, is gradually deepening his commitment — including performances of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony at David Geffen Hall through Sunday — but doesn’t officially start until fall 2026.Those who follow orchestras tend to assume that their quality will dip without a devoted director to oversee things. Partly because of the myth of the indispensable, all-powerful maestro, it can be easy to fear that conductorless periods will be rudderless ones.That certainly hasn’t been the case this season at Geffen Hall. The Philharmonic has been sounding great: fresh, vital, engaged, more cohesive. The chilly blare that seemed to frost the hall’s acoustics when it reopened in 2022 after a renovation has warmed and softened.The most telling music-making of the year was in a program last month led by the Hungarian conductor Ivan Fischer. The final hour of the concert was given over to a rare performance of Bartok’s fairy-tale ballet “The Wooden Prince,” a sprawling, instrument-packed score that swerves from candied to bombastic, from radiant expanses to driving dances. The orchestra rose to the occasion with playing that was nuanced and colorful, and in Mozart’s “Turkish” Violin Concerto, the ensemble matched Lisa Batiashvili’s sensual flair.But in a way, I was even more impressed by the opener: Mozart’s overture to “The Magic Flute,” a chestnut of the kind that is often passed over quickly in rehearsal. It glowed.The true test of a great orchestra — what reveals its base line standard — isn’t how it does in the big symphonies and premieres that steal the lion’s share of attention and applause. It’s how the group sounds in little repertory standards, and that “Magic Flute” overture may have been the most encouraging seven minutes of the season.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What I Learned From the Great Singer Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

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      The baritone Benjamin Appl remembers his teacher at 100, as one of the 20th century’s greatest singers and a complicated, conflicted man.One September morning in 2009, I glanced at my watch over and over, nerves fluttering in my chest. I was sitting in the front row of a packed concert hall in Schwarzenberg, Austria, surrounded by other vocal students. At precisely 10:30 a.m., the baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau stepped onto the stage. It was the first day of his master class at the Schubertiade, and it was the moment I would meet the artist who had shaped my musical life.I was just 12, growing up in Bavaria, Germany, when I first heard Fischer-Dieskau. Leonard Bernstein had called him “the greatest singer of the 20th century,” and few would disagree. When my music teacher played us a recording of his interpretation of Schubert’s “Winterreise,” something stirred within me. This voice was different. Immediate. Truthful. Over the years, I listened to dozens of Fischer-Dieskau’s recordings, studied them, grew with them, and was continually astonished by them.Now I stood before him. The old video footage of that master class still shows how nervous I was: my vibrato wavering, my breath shallow, my stance unsure. What I did not realize at the time was how open and attentive he was with me. At the end of the course, he offered to work with me privately. For the next three years, I had the privilege of studying with him regularly at his homes in Berlin and Bavaria. Those hours remain among the greatest gifts of my life.In the months leading up to his centennial on Wednesday, I was granted access to his personal archive: letters, diaries, programs, photo albums. It was a journey to find out more about the man behind the name, affectionately known to his friends as FiDi. And it was an immersive experience that helped me to shape my new album “For Dieter: The Past and the Future.”This recording features songs that defined his artistic path; songs that shaped the singer who would became one of the most revered vocalists of his time, including works from his family circle; songs by Brahms, Schubert and Wolf; as well as compositions written especially for him by Britten and Barber. Through my access to his archive, I was also able to accompany the album with a book that offers a deeply personal portrait of a multifaceted, fascinating man.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More