Michael Cope of U.C. Santa Cruz received a commision to write an opera. The money was already spent supporting his family of five when he developed composer's block. He said one note seemed no different than another and themes were beyond his grasp.
Describing his nightmare dilemma to an acquaintence he asked if there was such a thing as an intelligent program to assist composition and not just notation. The answer was "there are no intelligent programs but you could build a machine that could recreate themes bound by your parameters...

So Mike spent a year loading in all the great masters of vocal and orchestral music. Boring labor for sure. Loading the typical sequence of notes in the particular way Chopin would play various kinds of Nocturnes, Caprice or Impromptus. After the bulk of all Possible music forms and composers were painstakingly loaded it was time for the computers first creation.

He then told the computer to crank out an original Bach choral. The piano midi version sounded strained and he threw it away.
He later retrieved it and had human voices sing it. IT was beautiful.
So was the Mahler, Copeland, Debussy etc.

He has musicians perform these works now. An elderly lady who had not read the program notes exclaimed "that was so incredibly beautiful" when another patron satrted to say "but don't you know that that stuff was only... ah never mind".

These compositions have angered quite a few people.
I would naturally love to hear an original Bach double concerto that I could make with the click of my mouse. Naturally the premise should work with folk music genres as well.
Computer play me a Lemon blossom special...click


At least this is the way I heard it on npr radio
radiolab.org or
radiolab.npr.org