Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis

Violin Concerto: On a Path to Singularity

for amplified violin & orchestra (2025)

I. Emergence
II. Pattern Recognition
III. Automaton
IV. Simulacrum
V. Uncanny Valley
VI. Deus Ex Machina
VII. Turing Test
VIII. Ghost in the Machine
IX. Code Appendix

Instrumentation: 2(picc).2(corA).2(bcl).2(cbsn) / 2.2.2(2=b.tbn).1 / timp.+2perc. / pno / str. / solo violin
Duration: 27 minutes

Composed for Rachel Barton Pine and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.

Commissioned by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.

Premiered on February 27, 2025 by Rachel Barton Pine and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Raiskin conducting, at Manitoba Centennial Concert Hall, Winnipeg, MB, Canada.

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Perusal score

click here to view perusal score online

The technological singularity (also, simply, the singularity) is the hypothesis that the invention of artificial superintelligence (ASI) will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization. According to this hypothesis, an upgradable intelligent agent (such as a computer running software-based artificial general intelligence) would enter a "runaway reaction" of self-improvement cycles, with each new and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing an intelligence explosion and resulting in a powerful superintelligence that would, qualitatively, far surpass all human intelligence.
—Wikipedia

“Success in creating effective AI, could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization. Or the worst. We just don't know. So we cannot know if we will be infinitely helped by AI, or ignored by it and side-lined, or conceivably destroyed by it.”
—Stephen Hawking

The proliferation in the 2020s of generative artificial intelligence systems has marked a turning point in our civilization, the results of which – I think – we’ve only begun to recognize. For good and ill, this technological watershed has found resonance in my preoccupation with the ethics of technology – and in the literature (fiction or non-) that explores the topic. The possible eventual emergence of artificial superintelligence has long been a source of great concern amongst writers of speculative fiction and, more recently, amongst the leading scientific, technological, and philosophical minds of our generation.

My Violin Concerto: On a Path to Singularity is a musical exploration of that line of inquiry. Somewhere between a baroque concerto and an instrumental sci-fi oratorio, the work positions the soloist as the surrogate for machine learning (the synthetic), while the orchestra surrounding her fills in for humanity (the organic). As the artificial entity learns and grows increasingly towards sentience, the music asks itself: what is the end run? Will this lead to utopia or to a darker alternative?


—HS | www.hstafylakis.com