第二十九篇 I’ll Be Bach

Composer David Cope is the inventor of a computer program that writes original works of classical music. It took Cope 30 years to develop the software. Now most people can’t tell the difference between music by the famous German composer J. S. Bach (1685-1750) and the Bach-like compositions from Cope’s computer.

It all started in 1980 in the United States, when Cope was trying to write an opera. He was having trouble thinking of new melodies, so he wrote a computer program to create the melodies. At first this music was not easy to listen to. What did Cope do? He began to rethink how human beings compose music. He realized that composers，brains work like big databases. First, they take in all the music that they have ever heard. Then they take out the music that they dislike. Finally, they make new music from what is left. According to Cope, only the great composers are able to create the database accurately, remember it, and form new musical patterns from it.

Cope built a huge database of existing music. He began with hundreds of works by Bach. The software analyzed the data：it broke it down into smaller pieces and looked for patterns. It then combined the pieces into new patterns. Before long, the program could compose short Bach-like works. They weren’t good, but it was a start.

Cope knew he had more work to do-he had a whole opera to write. He continued to improve the software. Soon it could analyze more complex music. He also added many other composers, including his own work, to the database.

A few years later，Cope’s computer program, called “Emmy”，was ready to help him with his opera. The process required a lot of collaboration between the composer and Emmy. Cope listened to the computer’s musical ideas and used the ones that he liked. With Emmy, the opera took only two weeks to finish. It was called Cradle Falling, and it was a great success! Cope received some of the best reviews of his career, but no one knew exactly how he had composed the work.

Since that first opera, Emmy has written thousands of compositions. Cope still gives Emmy feedback on what he likes and doesn’t like of her music, but she is doing most of the hard work of composing these days!

詞匯：

original/??r?d??n?l / adj.有獨創性的

collaboration / k??l?b??re???n / n.合作

review/ r?'vju:/ n.評論

feedback /'fi:db?k / n.反饋

注釋

J. S. Bach約翰?塞巴斯蒂安?巴赫(德語：Johann Sebastian Bach，1685年3月31日一1750年7月28日)，巴洛克時期的德國作曲家，杰出的管風琴、小提琴、大鍵琴演奏家，同作曲家亨德爾和泰勒曼齊名。巴赫被普遍認為是音樂史上最重要的作曲家之一，并被尊稱為“西方‘現代音樂’之父”，也是西方文化史上最重要的人物之一。

練習：

1.The music composed by David cope is about ______.

A　classical music

B　pop music

C　drama

D　country music

2.By developing a computer software，David cope aimed ______.

A　to be like Bach

B　to study Bach

C　to write an opera

D　to create a musical database

3.What did cope realize about a great composer’s brain?

A　It works like a big database.

B　It writes a computer program.

C　It can recognize any music patterns.

D　It can create melodies.

4.Who is Emmy?

A　a database

B　a computer software

C　a composer who helped David

D　an opera

5.We can infer from the passage that ______.

A　David Cope is a computer programmer.

B　David Cope loves music.

C　Bach’s music helped him a lot.

D　Emmy did much more work than a composer.

答案與題解：

1.A　第一段的第一句：作曲家大衛?科普編寫了一個計算機軟件，它能創作出古典音樂作品。

2.C　從第二段的第一句可以看出，大衛編寫電腦軟件的目的是寫歌劇。A、B和D都屬于創作歌劇的一部分。

3.D　第二段的后半部分講的是偉大的歌劇作者與一般的歌劇作者的不同之處是通過對數據進行準確的構建、記憶而后創作出新的音樂形式。

4.B　從第五段第一句可知艾米是計算機軟件。

5.D　從本文第一句可知大衛是一個作曲家，不是計算機程序員，所以排除A，B和C項內容沒有提及;從本文的第五段和第六段可知，艾米大大提高了大衛的創作速度，最后一句，大部分重活都由艾米來做，所以作曲家只干一小部分工作。

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（責任編輯：vstara）

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