Ingolf Wunder was recently interviewed by Oberösterreichische Nachrichten, a leading newspaper in Austria about the new app MusicalDNA.me. Here is the direct translation of the article originally written in German.

How to decode the genetics of music

Ingolf Wunder: The world-renowned pianist has developed an app for musical DNA research and will be playing in Bad Schallerbach on March 2.

By Peter Grubmüller

Born in Klagenfurt, Ingolf Wunder was originally a promising violinist. His talent as a pianist was discovered by chance by Linz piano professor Horst Matthaeus and encouraged at the Bruckner Conservatory (now Bruckner University). He won several prizes at the prestigious Chopin Competition and his international career took off. Out of friendship with artistic director Peter Gillmayr, Wunder regularly performs in the Atrium in Bad Schallerbach – including on March 2 (5 pm). Parallel to his career as a musician, the 39-year-old is developing digital music mediation technologies in collaboration with ETH Zurich and the Kalaidos University of Music. His achievement in decoding music genetics is now available free of charge at MusicalDNA.me.

OÖNachrichten: The largest Italian daily newspaper “Corriere della sera” describes you as a “musical geneticist*. How do you use artificial intelligence (AI) to get to the bottom of music’s genes?

Ingolf Wunder: Together with my wife Paulina, I have been on what we call a ‘Quality Music Mission’ for years. You can think of it as researching the code of music and natural music-making, but of course it’s more complicated than that: our app is called “Musical DNA” and relates to playing styles.

In what way?

We have trained an AI that initially only identifies the styles of the best pianists from the 20th century onwards for classical piano music – later we will extend this to other instruments. This means that any student or amateur pianist can upload an interpretation and the app will show where and how they play most similarly. This means that in one piece you sound 80 percent like Arthur Rubinstein and ten percent like Vladimir Horowitz. You can also zoom in on the bars to see that you come close to Friedrich Gulda in this segment. I have given concerts in almost 50 countries and I see the same problem everywhere: students hardly know these great masters any more. It’s like a physicist not knowing who Einstein was.

Why is that?

This applies to all artistic disciplines and is due to the fact that art is also becoming increasingly business-driven. For me, there are two main reasons for this lack of knowledge: On the one hand, less and less artistic knowledge is being taught, it’s more about skills, how to win a competition and make a career. On the other hand, it should be more about what’s not in the notes – that’s a stupid phrase, but it’s true. Emotional content, as taught by the great masters, should be the focus. And if we use AI to make pupils aware of this, then the music will benefit.

When would you describe your project as successful?

We want to preserve the real art and make it accessible to students. These great pianists are linked to recordings and videos, among other things, so that the student can watch how one plays this and the other that – this gives young people a taste for it.

You will be playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata in Bad Schallerbach, among other things. What results does the app get from your interpretation?

You may be familiar with the “My-Heritage” app, which analyzes your DNA to determine whether you are 60 percent Eastern European, 30 percent English – and so on. That’s how our system works: there are three main hit areas and the factor of uniqueness, for example, because everyone has the chance to develop something completely new, which says nothing about the quality (laughs). I am the only student of Adam Harasiewicz, who himself learned from Rubinstein and Friedman, and that is actually my line, which is really visible. However, there is a great deal of uniqueness in my work. The audience has to find out whether they like it.

Should we imagine that your app accesses all the data of the piano interpretations circulating on the Internet?

It’s a bit more complicated. We don’t take the recordings themselves, but the interpretative representation of data, i.e. in terms of timing. But if you want to visualize it, there are certainly hundreds of thousands of recordings. Probably even millions. In an eight-minute piece, we had 80,000 data points.

To what extent do technology, science and art come together in your work?

The app development is done by our company, all the research comes from ETH Zurich. I’ve also had a very different life to most successful pianists: this includes Bad Schallerbach, where I played my first orchestral concert at the age of 14. As I first played the violin and only later started playing the piano later, I had a normal childhood. From the age of seven, I played with my brother’s computer, soon programmed, designed maps for computer games and made recordings myself. That’s my technical background.

And the scientific one?

I enjoy it even more because I’ve always liked asking questions. Our son is two years old and he is constantly asking why, why, why. This questioning is probably more important than ever in the age of AI. Despite our genre being all about micro timing, young pianists are ultimately shown at some point on their journey that “it really doesn’t matter how you play”. It’s more about the market size you reach – how good you look or how colorful your socks are. I say that from a privileged point of view because I’ve been able to play in the best concert halls in the world. Nevertheless, I have always searched for the musical truth and I was very surprised that there is no research on this. That’s why we do it.

Have you come across aspects of AI in your work that scare you or give you hope?

I am fundamentally a positive person and I can see that the existence of AI means we can finally ask the right questions – if we ask them. Many people make the mistake of saying that AI will never be able to compose like Mozart or write like Goethe. Then my wife always rightly says: Yes, how many people write like Goethe or Mozart? We all believe that we are the top performers. But AI has already mastered our mediocre achievements.

Is there a segment of your life that you protect from AI?

I wonder whether this is still possible: as soon as you switch on your cell phone and are on the internet, you are in the AI that processes your data and information. But with our apps, we also want to increase awareness and mindfulness of this important subject, which is very useful in itself. That sounds pompous, but people will experience the benefits we derive from AI. We have started with the piano, and other instruments will soon follow.

Original language (German)