The year 2025 marks the 200th birthday of world-famous composer Johann Strauss II. On behalf of Johann Strauss Festjahr 2025 Wien, the Ars Electronica Futurelab is dedicating itself to this anniversary with “Walzersymphonie” (Waltz Symphony). The project’s central question is: “How can artists use the creative potential of AI technologies?”
Johann Strauss II shaped the history of music with works such as the Danube Waltz and operettas like “Die Fledermaus” (The Bat) and “Eine Nacht in Venedig” (A Night in Venice). As a tribute, students of renowned music universities work with creative AI on a symphony that will be performed live by the Brucker Orchestra in Vienna and Linz in 2025. A jury chose four student projects to be part of the Waltz Symphony:
Movements of the Waltz Symphony
Carolina Caballero Bastidas and Matthias Guntner from the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna shed light on Johann Strauss as a person from the perspective of dance music and dramaturgy and at the same time address the problem of disinformation in the age of artificial intelligence.
Danielle Lurie from the University of Music and Theater Munich considers artificial intelligence as a mirror of our society and composes a humorous operetta about bias and discrimination, which explores Johann Strauss’ operetta “Die Fledermaus” and takes up both characters and motifs from it.
Johannes Brömmel from the Mozarteum University Salzburg combines the phenomenon of “noise” as a sonic overload with the music of Johann Strauss and uses AI to explore the habits and limits of our musical perception as a reflection of our everyday overload through information and technology.
David Bock from the Zurich University of the Arts is composing a piece that functions as a dialog between traditional composition and artificial intelligence. He interprets musical phrases from the music of Johann Strauss as questions or answering elements in a dialog with AI.
Accompanying projects
In their compositional work, Yurii Riepin and Fabian Blum from the University of Music and Theater Munich explore industrial noises of the 19th century and the present day, thus building on Johann Strauss’ musical explorations of mechanical and motor sounds.
Micha Fazeli Pour from the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna deals with musical contrasts in Strauss’ music and their parallels to social contrasts, which are reflected in his artistic examination.
Workshop Setting with hosts Susanne Kiesenhofer and Ali Nikrang, photo: Martin Hieslmair
Susanne Kiesenhofer explaining the user Interface of the AI tool Ricercar, photo: Martin Hieslmair
Workshop Setting with hosts Susanne Kiesenhofer and Ali Nikrang, photo: Martin Hieslmair
Workshop leaders Ali Nikrang and Susanne Kiesenhofer, photo: Martin Hieslmair
Workshop leaders Ali Nikrang and Susanne Kiesenhofer, photo: Martin Hieslmair
Student workshop with host Ali Nikrang; photo: Susanne Kiesenhofer
Student workshop with host Ali Nikrang; photo: Susanne Kiesenhofer
Student workshop with host Ali Nikrang; photo: Susanne Kiesenhofer
Working with Johann Strauss and Ricercar
The core concept of “Walzersymphonie” comprises a series of workshops that took place at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, Mozarteum University Salzburg, Zurich University of the Arts, as well as the University of Music and Theater Munich in May/June 2024. These workshops were primarily aimed at students studying composition and served as places of discourse for creative ideas on the use of AI in dealing with the music of Johann Strauss.
Selected students got the opportunity to create new compositions using a version of the AI system Ricercar that has been specially adapted for this project and trained with the music of Johann Strauss. Ricercar is an AI-based composition system already used in numerous artistic projects. It has been developed since 2019 by AI researcher and classical musician Ali Nikrang in the Ars Electronica Futurelab as a research tool specifically for the artistic needs of classical music.
Performances of the “Walzersymphonie” in 2025
By summer 2025, Johann Strauss Festjahr 2025 Wien has commissioned a four-movement symphony as part of the “Walzersymphonie” project, which will be performed in September 2025 at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz and in November 2025 in Vienna with the Bruckner Orchestra Linz. The project will also be accompanied by lectures, publications, and studies. The “Walzersymphonie” project thus serves not only as an artistic exploration but also as a public discussion about the role of AI in art: how do human creativity and machines fit together and how can we work so that AI systems complement rather than replace these creative processes?
From a technical point of view, an experimental approach to AI requires an openness to new possibilities and an intuitive approach without clear guidelines. Interacting with AI requires a certain amount of freedom and creativity on the part of the user in order to fully harness the potential of the technology.
A project of Johann Strauss Festjahr 2025 Wien in cooperation with Ars Electronica Futurelab
“Waltz Symphony”: Of humans and machines
Artificial intelligence and classical music merge seamlessly in the Waltz Symphony project. Composition students develop innovative orchestral pieces in dialogue with the AI application Ricercar.
Credits
Ars Electronica Futurelab: Susanne Kiesenhofer, Ali Nikrang
Client: Johann.Strauss-Festjahr2025 GmbH
Partners: University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, Mozarteum University Salzburg, Zurich University of the Arts, University of Music and Theater Munich
Composers: Fabian Blum, David Bock, Johannes Brömmel, Carolina Caballero Bastidas, Micha Fazeli Pour, Matthias Guntner, Danielle Lurie, Yurii Riepin