Google is celebrating composer Johann Sebastian Bach today with its first artificial intelligence-powered Doodle.
The animated Google Doodle today shows the famous German composer playing an organ. It was launched in celebration of the musician’s birthday, which fell on March 21, 1685, under the old Julian calendar. (It will be recognized on March 31 on the modern calendar.)
The Doodle encourages users to try composing their own two-measure melodies. Then the Doodle adds harmony to develop the melody in a more Baroque style. Bach used four-part harmony in most of his compositions to carry the melodic line.
Google says the Doodle uses machine learning (or AI—artificial intelligence) to create appropriate harmonies in Bach’s signature musical style.
To develop the artificial intelligence Doodle, Google teams created a machine-learning model. It was trained on 306 of Bach’s chorale harmonizations. Another team worked to allow machine learning to occur within the web browser instead of on its servers.
There was nothing artificial about J.S. Bach’s musical intelligence. He was born into a family of musicians, and by a young age, it was obvious that he had inherited a musical genius. Though orphaned by age 10, the youngster was raised under his oldest brother’s care. That brother, Johann Christoph Bach, was also a musician, employed as the organist for St. Michael’s Church in the small German town or Orhdruf.
J.S. Bach produced hundreds of musical works over the course of his life. Of those, a very large proportion were inspired by scripture and hymns. The volume of sacred content represented not only the economic opportunities for the composer. They reflected his devout faith and close relationship to God.
Bach never sought fame or wealth. But he is remembered even today—300 or more years after his lifetime—for framing his life’s work this way: “Music’s only purpose should be for the glory of God.”
(Google’s first-ever artificial intelligence-powered Doodle celebrates the birthdate of composer Johann Sebastian Bach with an interactive melody-creating invitation for users. Google says the Doodle uses machine learning to “harmonize the custom melody into Bach’s signature music style.” Google via AP)
