Symphony No. 8 (Schubert)

Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 8 in B minor (sometimes renumbered as Symphony No. 7, in accordance with the Neue Schubert-Ausgabe ), commonly known as the "Unfinished Symphony" (Template:Lang-de), D.759, was started in 1822 but left with only two movements known to be complete, even though Schubert would live for another six years. A scherzo, nearly completed in piano score but with only two pages orchestrated, also survives. It has long been theorized that Schubert may have sketched a finale which instead became the big B minor entr'acte from his incidental music to Rosamunde, but all the evidence for this is circumstantial. One possible reason for Schubert's leaving the symphony incomplete is the predominance of the same meter (three-in-a-bar). The first movement is in 3/4, the second in 3/8 and the third (an incomplete scherzo) also in 3/4. Three consecutive movements in basically the same meter rarely occur in symphonies, sonatas or chamber works of the great Viennese composers. Haydn's Farewell Symphony has been cited as a notable exception; but its finale, though ending with a 3/4 Andante in which all the instruments drop out one by one leaving two duetting solo violinists ending the work in F-sharp major, starts with an orthodox sonata-allegro in the tonic F-sharp minor in common (i.e., duple) time transitioning after the recapitulation to the unorthodox extended slow 3/4 "Farewell" coda in modified sonata form.

The Unfinished, third movement, Facsimile, 1885, In J. R. von Herbeck’s Biography

Schubert’s Eighth is sometimes called the first Romantic symphony due to its emphasis on expressive melody, vivid harmony and creative combinations of orchestral tone color despite the architecturally imposing Classical sonata-form structures of its two completed movements highlighted by the dramatically climactic development section of the first movement based solely on its quietly sinister opening theme.

To this day, musicologists still disagree as to why Schubert failed to complete the symphony; or even whether he did fail to complete it. Some have speculated that he stopped working on it in the middle of the scherzo in the fall of 1822 because it was associated in his mind with the initial outbreak of syphilis, or simply that he was distracted by the inspiration for his Wanderer Fantasie for solo piano which occupied his time and energy immediately afterward; or perhaps a combination of both factors.

Early history

In 1823, the Graz Music Society gave Schubert an honorary diploma. He felt obliged to dedicate a symphony to them in return, and sent his friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner, a leading member of the Society, an orchestral score he had written in 1822 consisting of the two completed movements of the Unfinished plus at least the first two pages of the start of a scherzo. This much is known.

What is not known, and will almost certainly never be known, is how much of the symphony Schubert actually wrote, and how much of what he did write he gave to Hüttenbrenner. The following exists: the first two movements complete in full score, the first two pages of a scherzo in full score. The rest of the scherzo (except for the missing second strain of the trio) existed in a separate manuscript in short score (not sent to Hüttenbrenner but found among Schubert's copious manuscripts after his death which were carefully preserved by his devoted schoolteacher brother Ferdinand), but nothing of any fourth movement. A finale (fourth movement) in the home key (B minor) would have been the norm for any symphony written at that time, but there is no direct evidence that Schubert ever started work on it. It has, however, been surmised that the most extended Entr'acte from Rosamunde (also in B minor, in the same style of the first movement and with the same instrumentation as the symphony) was indeed that fourth movement, which Schubert recycled by inserting it into his Rosamunde incidental music composed in early 1823 just after the Wanderer Fantasie. The great Schubert scholar Brian Newbould, who harmonized, orchestrated and conjecturally completed the piano sketch of the scherzo quite convincingly, believed this to be true; but not all scholars agree. Pages appear to have been torn out after the beginning of the scherzo in the full score sent to Hüttenbrenner, in any event.

The fact that Hüttenbrenner neither had the work performed nor made the society aware he even had the manuscript, is curious and has led to various theories. Was he given an incomplete score by Schubert and was waiting for the remainder to arrive before saying anything? If so, he waited in vain throughout the six remaining years of Schubert's life. After Schubert's tragically premature death in 1828 (of typhus as a complication of syphilis), why didn't Hüttenbrenner then make the existence of the manuscript known? Do the torn pages suggest he had somehow damaged the piece and managed to lose, or even inadvertently destroy, the last two movements? Was guilt therefore the reason he kept silent about the work's existence for 37 years after Schubert died? Could personality factors like introvertedness or jealousy been at play here? Old age and approaching death seem to have influenced Hüttenbrenner to reveal the work to an important and gracious visitor at long last (in 1865, when he was 76 and had only three more years to live), conductor Johann von Herbeck, who premiered the extant two movements on 17 December 1865 in Vienna, adding the brilliantly busy but expressively lightweight perpetual-motion last movement of Schubert's engaging 3rd Symphony (in D major, next best of the first seven symphonies to No. 5) as an inadequate finale, expressively quite incompatible with the monumental first two movements of the Unfinished in a performance received with great enthusiasm by the audience. The score of those two movements was not published before 1867.

The Unfinished Symphony has been called No. 7 (recently, for example, in the New Schubert Edition) instead of No. 8 as it usually is, since the other work sometimes referred to as Schubert's 7th(in E major, completed by Felix Weingartner) was also left incomplete but in a different way, with at least fragments of all four of its movements in Schubert's hand.

The completed portion

The two complete, and completely orchestrated movements, which are all of the symphony as it is performed in the concert repertoire, are:

First Movement: Allegro moderato in B minor

In sonata form, opening softly in the strings followed by a theme shared by the solo oboe and clarinet. A typically laconic Schubertian transition consists of just four measures for the two horns, effectively modulating to the submediant key of G major (mm. 38-41). The second subject begins with a celebrated lyrical melody in that key, stated first by the celli and then by the violins (sometimes drolly sung to Sigmund Spaeth's words as "This is ... the sym - phoneee ... that Schubert wrote but never fin-ished") to a gentle syncopated accompaniment. This is interrupted by a dramatic closing group alternating heavy tutti sforzandi interspersed with pauses and developmental variants of the G major melody, ending the exposition.

An important moment in the first movement occurs in measure 109 (and is repeated in the recapitulation in measure 327). In these measures, Schubert holds a tonic 'B' pedal in the second bassoon and first horn under the dominant F♯ chord, that evokes the end of the development in Beethoven's Eroica Symphony. Recently, unfortunately, a well-meaning but inexperienced editor removed this dissonance by altering the second bassoon and first horn part. Conductors must check these parts carefully to make sure that the 'B' pedal is intact.

Unusual for sonata form, the development section begins with a quiet restatement of the opening theme in the subdominant (E minor) (a tonality usually reserved for near the end of a sonata form movement somewhere in the recap or coda) and rises to a prolonged climax in the same key starting with a dramatic variant of the first theme in the full orchestra with prominent trombones, the expected relative (D) major of the tonic (B) minor first appearing only at the end of that climax and then again for the second subject of the recap (in place of the expected tonic B major) instead of much earlier, in the second subject of the exposition, as customary. The flutes and oboes then resume their melodic role at the end of that dramatic outburst, transitioning to the recapitulation.

The recapitulation consists mostly of orthodox sonata-form restatement of the themes except that the melodious second theme is restated in the mediant D major instead of the expected B major (parallel to the tonic B minor), but the dramatic closing section does end in B major, and leads to a coda in the tonic B minor recalling the opening theme for still another, final, dramatic reworking to pave the way for the emphatic concluding chords.

Second Movement: Andante con moto in E major

The second movement alternates two contrasting themes in sonatina form (sonata form without development, with a quietly dramatic, elegiac, extended coda that could be characterized as a concluding development section). The lyrical first is introduced by the horns, low strings, brass and high strings playing in counterpoint. The plaintive second, in minor, after four simple unharmonized notes in transition spelling out the tonic chord of the relative C-sharp minor quietly by the first violins, begins in the solo clarinet in C-sharp minor and continues in the solo oboe in C-sharp major in a supreme example of the simple-appearing yet supremely masterful major-minor juxtapositions that are a hallmark of Schubert's harmonic genius. A dramatic closing theme in the full orchestra returns to C-sharp minor but ends in D-flat major (the enharmonic equivalent of C-sharp major). A short transition back to the tonic E major ushers in the recap, notable for the restatement of the second theme in the subdominant A minor (instead of the expected tonic parallel E minor) begun by the oboe and continued by the clarinet (vice versa to their roles in the exposition). The coda starts with a new theme that is simply an extension of the two-bar E major cadential figure opening the movement. This gives way to the laconic triadic first-violin transition motto leading to a restatement of the first theme by the woodwinds in distant A-flat major followed by the motto again leading back to the tonic E major for a final extended transformation of the first theme, leading in term to a final extended version of the opening cadential figure that reappears to close.

The fragment of the scherzo intended as the third movement returns to the tonic B minor, with a G major trio. The first thirty measures are preserved in full score, but the entire rest of the scherzo proper (both strains) only in short score. Only the first strain of the trio exists, and that as a mere unadorned, unharmonized single melodic line. The second strain is entirely absent.

After Hüttenbrenner's release of the two completed movements of the Unfinished to Herbeck, some music historians and scholars took much trouble to "prove" the composition complete even in the truncated two-movement form, and indeed that abbreviated structure alone has captivated the listening public to consider it as one of Schubert's most cherished compositions. The fact that classical tradition was unlikely to accept that a symphony could end in a different key from the one it began in (with the B minor first movement and the E major finale by incomplete default), and the even more undeniable fact that Schubert had begun a third movement in B minor (of which the score he gave to Hüttenbrenner included precisely 30 bars of fully orchestrated scherzo and 112 succeeding bars in short score), stands against the view that the two completed movements are self-sufficient and can legitimately stand alone by themselves.

Reception

Reviewing the premiere of the symphony in 1865, the preeminent music critic Eduard Hanslick wrote: "When, after a few introductory bars, clarinet and oboe sound una voce a sweet melody on top of the quiet murmuring of the strings, any child knows the composer and a half-suppressed exclamation "Schubert" runs hummingly through the hall. He has hardly entered, but it is as if you knew his steps, his very way of opening the door... The whole movement is a sweet stream of melodies, in spite of its vigor and geniality so crystal-clear that you can see every pebble on the bottom. And everywhere the same warmth, the same golden sunshine that makes buds grow! The Andante unfolds itself broadly and [even] more majestically [than the opening Allegro]. Sounds of lament or anger rarely enter this song full of intimate, quiet happiness, clouds of a musical thunderstorm reflecting musical effect rather than dangerous passion... The sonorous beauty of both movements is enchanting. With a few horn passages, an occasional brief clarinet or oboe solo on the simplest, most natural basis of orchestration, Schubert achieves sound effects which no refinement of Wagner's instrumentation ever attains" (translated from the original German).

He ended by stressing that the symphony is among Schubert's most beautiful instrumental works.

In popular culture

The 1957 Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoon Boo Bop has Casper helping Franz Schubert's ghost to "finish the Unfinished," trying to dispel the noises outside the music museum where the action is taking place which are interrupting progress toward the symphony's completion.

In one of the 1960s Fractured Fairytales (featuring "Peabody here, as he always introduced himself in each episode, and his "Wayback Machine"), Peabody and the Wayback go back in time to join Schubert himself to find out why he didn't finish the symphony. The quaint gallows humor is annoyingly marred by Peabody's reiterated mispronunciation of the composer's surname as "Schuber'" as if he were French.

The Unfinished Symphony was featured prominently in Steven Spielberg's 2002 science fiction film Minority Report.

It provides Gargamel's theme in the animated series The Smurfs.

Unfinished, the third episode of the sixth season of the television comedy series How I Met Your Mother, begins with the Unfinished Symphony playing in the background during a Ted Mosby architectural lecture.

Bart the Daredevil, the eighth episode of the second season of the television comedy series The Simpsons, features a children's concert recital of the Unfinished Symphony with solos by "Lisa Simpson" and Todd Flanders. When Homer hears Principal Skinner call it an unfinished symphony, he exclaims "Ooh, unfinished! This shouldn't take that long!", clearly unaware of the its actual length.

Peter Schickele parodied the concept of the Unfinished Symphony in his "Unbegun Symphony," which consists of two movements labeled III and IV with an annotation explaining that Schickele was born too late to write the first two movements.

In the opening scene of the 1979 film Being There, the first movement of the Unfinished Symphony is on a television broadcast that wakes the central character Chance the Gardner, played by Peter Sellers.

One of the most well-known versions of Lon Chaney, Sr.'s silent film The Phantom of the Opera employs the Unfinished Symphony for its soundtrack.

The symphony is also used at least once in the children program, Little Einsteins, notably in a 'Shubert Guessing Game' in which the lead characters mission foiled by an antagonist made out of gingerbread.

Modern completions

In 1927–28, Felix Weingartner, better known as a great classical conductor who was the first to record all nine Beethoven symphonies (divided between London and Vienna) and the second (after Stokowski in Philadelphia) to record all four of Brahms (in London), composed his Sixth Symphony, La Tragica (in memory of 19 November 1828 [the day Schubert died)), as a tribute to Schubert on the centenary of his death. The second movement of Weingartner's symphony is a realization of Schubert's incomplete sketch of the scherzo seventy years before Newbould's independent effort that has been preserved on CD (unlike Weingartner's, at least as of February 2013). In 1928, the 100th anniversary of Schubert's death, Columbia Records held a worldwide competition for the best conjectural completion of the "Unfinished" (see the article on the competition for citations). Probably about 100 completions were submitted, but also a much larger number of original works. Pianist Frank Merrick won the "English Zone" of the competition; his scherzo and (interesting) finale were later performed and recorded (on Columbia), but are unfortuately long out of print and have never been reissued (again, as of February 2013).

Only some of the completions — Merrick's is not one of them — used material from Schubert's scherzo sketch. The first movement of Joseph Holbrooke's Fourth Symphony, one of the British entries, is mostly a performing version of the sketch (the second strain of the trio of which, entirely missing from the sketch, had to be conjecturally completed), and a theme from the scherzo appears in his finale. Independent completions of the scherzo movement also were made by Geoffrey Bush in 1944 and conductor Denis Vaughan c. 1960.

More recently, British musicologists Gerald Abraham and Brian Newbould have also offered completions of the symphony (scherzo and finale) using Schubert's scherzo sketch and the extended B minor entr'acte from his incidental music to the play Rosamunde Schubert wrote a few months later, long suspected by some musicologists as originally intended as the "Unfinished"'s finale. (In fact, it was even played as the finale as long ago as the British premiere of the symphony on 6 April 1867.) Its first movement, the scherzo sketch and the entr-acte are all in B minor, their instrumentation is the same, and the entr'acte (like the first movement) is in sonata-form (as are all Schubert's symphonic finales) and in a very similar style and mood. If the entr'acte indeed started life as the finale of this symphony, then Schubert evidently recycled it (probably at that stage unorchestrated) from the symphony to the incidental music, presumably orchestrating it for the play and perhaps making compositional changes.

The Russian composer Anton Safronov completed the scherzo sketch and created a new finale for the symphony (some themes of the latter based on themes from several Schubert piano works), which he described as an attempt to move into the mind of the composer. His completion was performed at the Royal Festival Hall in London on 6 November 2007 with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and on 2 October 2007 with the Russian National Orchestra (followed by the American tour in the early 2008), both performances conducted by Vladimir Jurowski. Due to his unusual use of material from Schubert keyboard works in the finale, Safronov's completion has been subject to criticism varying from definitely positive to ambivalent. and the negative ones).

Robin Holloway, Cambridge University professor of composition, has realized the Scherzo based on, but not bound to, the sketches; e.g., with two trios, the first from Schubert's sketch and the second entirely his own composition. It was premiered by the Cambridge University Musical Society on 18/06/2011.

See also

• Legendary virtuoso Leopold Godowsky composed a Passacaglia with 44 Variations, cadenza and fugue on the opening theme of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, for piano.

Further reading

• Corey Field, editor. The Musician's Guide to Symphonic Music: Essays from the Eulenburg Scores. Schott Music Corporation
• Brian Newbould, Schubert and the Symphony: A New Perspective (Toccata Press, 1992)

External links

• Free scores by Symphony No. 8 at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
• Piano reduction (Note: the PDF shows C-naturals in measures 198 and 200 of the first movement; these should be C-sharps.)
• About the Composition: Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759 ("Unfinished"), Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.