Symphony 8 Unfinished - Schubert (1797-1828)

Allegro moderato: Andante con moto

Schubert began work on his eighth symphony in 1822, but managed to complete only two movements. He left piano sketches of a third movement, providing two pages of fully orchestrated material. His intention was therefore probably to complete the work in the customary way, with a scherzo and finale. It seems rather unlikely that public taste at the time would have accepted a two-movement symphony ending in a key only distantly related to that with which it began, as the first movement is in B minor, and the second in E major. Ironically, the two movements he completed have provided one of the most popular and enduring works of the repertoire. In 1823 after receiving an honorary diploma from the Styrian Music Society in Graz, Schubert presented the score to Anselm Hüttenbrenner as its representative. Anselm kept it until the conductor Johann Herbeck persuaded him to hand it over in 1865, conducting the first performance in Vienna that year.

There are many reasons why Schubert may not have completed the work. Since both the opening movements are in triple time (three beats in a bar), it may have been difficult for Schubert to conceive how he could continue the symphony with the usual triple time scherzo, whilst avoiding monotony. Hans Gal, the renowned music scholar, has suggested that Schubert felt the material of the third movement not on the same level as first two. New York professor, Martin Chusid, thinks it is because the trio includes themes very closely related to those of Beethoven’s second symphony, as several are reminiscent of material in the Andante of that work. The scope and argument of the symphony is a world away from that of Schubert’s predecessors and heroes. In the work, the composer demonstrates an acute ear as well as orchestral imagination that brings music firmly into the world of the romantic sensibility found in the authors and poets of the time. The Unfinished is very much a symphony of song, in keeping with both this world and Schubert’s preoccupations as a composer. This contrasts strongly with the dramatic workings-out of Beethoven, the rhetoric of Haydn and the operatic characterisations of Mozart’s symphonies.

Along with Schubert’s Great C major Symphony, the Unfinished introduces a new spaciousness into the pacing of the symphony. Tempi are slow with the pulse of each movement very similar. The opening theme ends with a sustained long note, before the second theme begins with a repeated accompaniment, perhaps somehow foreshadowing the language of Bruckner. The most song-like second theme is preceded by a long held note in horns and bassoons. The exploration of distant modulations (changes of key) within a short space of time gives the impression of the epic. This is true at the end of the second movement, where a very active tutti, with fast moving passage work in the bass, suddenly gives way to a solo oboe singing above a soft wind chord, somehow in its own time world. The key of B minor is very rare in classical repertoire, probably because unvalved horns and trumpets in these keys did not exist. Before the invention of valves, brass instruments were usually used in the key of the work and were only able to play the notes of the harmonic series (or notes you might recognise from a military fanfare) in this key. Schubert’s horns are in D, allowing them to play a great deal in the G major sections, with trumpets in E, but it may have been fear of how he would deploy these instruments in the finale that prevented him from finishing the work.

The first movement is in sonata form, where two contrasting thematic groups are subject to development before being repeated in the home key. The gap between the first and second group is unusually short, a practice seen at times in the composer’s songs. The key relationship (B minor to G major) is also gentler than the tension created in the works of classical composers. The second movement alternates between two different themes, the first featuring interplay between basses, horns and violins, and the second (the syncopated accompaniment of which is reminiscent of similar writing in Beethoven’s second symphony) appearing first on the clarinet before passing to the other woodwinds. Both themes are repeated in variation.

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