A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Formula: Algorithmic Composition for Musical Theater

Algorithmic composition methods must prove themselves within real-world musical contexts to more\udfirmly solidify their adoption in musical practice. The present project is an automatic composing program trained\udon a corpus of songs from musical theater to create novel material, directly generating a scored lead sheet of vocal\udmelody and chords. The program can also produce output based upon phonetic analysis of user-provided lyrics. The\udchance to undertake the research arose from a television documentary funded by Sky Arts that considered the question\udof whether current-generation, computationally creative methods could devise a new work of musical theater (the\udresearch described here provides but one strand within that project). Allied with the documentary, the resultant\udmusical had a two-week West End run in London and was itself broadcast in full. Evaluation of the project included\udboth design feedback from a musical theater composer team, and critical feedback from audiences and media coverage.\udThe research challenges of the real-world context are discussed, with respect to the compromises necessary to get such\uda project to the stage