Symphony No. 8 (Schubert)

Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 8 in B minor (sometimes renumbered as Symphony No. 7), commonly known as the "Unfinished Symphony" (German: Unvollendete), 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 exactly the same meter rarely occur in the symphonies, sonatas or chamber works of the great Viennese composers (one notable exception being Haydn's Farewell Symphony).

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

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 provided to his friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner, who was a representative of the society, a score he had written in 1822. This much is known.

What is not known, and will almost certainly never be known, is how much of the symphony Schubert wrote, and how much of what he did write he gave to Hüttenbrenner. The following exists: the first two movements exist in full score, the first two pages of a scherzo in full score, and the remainder of the scherzo in piano score, 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 this movement. It has been surmised that the Entr'acte from Rosamunde (written in B minor and with the same instrumentation as the symphony) was that fourth movement, which Schubert appropriated for the play, but scholars are not in agreement about this. There appear to have been pages torn out after the beginning of the scherzo.

The fact that Hüttenbrenner did not have the piece performed, or even make the society aware he 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 be provided before saying anything? If so, he waited in vain for the remaining five years of Schubert's life. After Schubert died in 1828, why did Hüttenbrenner not 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 destroy the last two movements? Was guilt the reason he said nothing about the work's existence for 37 years after Schubert died? Old age and approaching death seem to have been a factor in Hüttenbrenner finally revealing the work. This happened in 1865, when he was 76 (he was to die three years later). He showed it to the conductor Johann von Herbeck, who conducted the extant two movements on 17 December 1865 in Vienna, adding the last movement of Schubert's 3rd Symphony as the finale. This performance was met with great enthusiasm by the audience. The score of the symphony was not published until after 1867.

Sometimes this work is referred to as Symphony No. 7 (for example in the New Schubert Edition), since the other work sometimes referred to as Schubert's 7th was also left incomplete, but in a different way.

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

The symphony's first movement is in sonata form, opening softly in the strings followed by a melody sounded by the oboe and clarinet. A typical Schubertian transition consists of just four measures, effectively modulating to the submediant key of G major (mm. 38-41). The second subject group is played by the celli and repeated by the violins. An emphatic closing theme features heavy sforzandi, and is based on continual development of the second subject.

An important moment in the first movement occurs in measure 109 (and is repeated 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. Unfortunately in recent times, 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. Unusually for sonata form, the opening of the development is the opening theme in E minor, the subdominant, rather than the dominant key which would be expected at the end of the exposition.

The development section is extended and features a reworking of the primary theme group. Near the end, the flutes and oboes recapture their melodic role from the movement's beginning, preparing a transition to the recapitulation.

The recapitulation follows standard sonata form principles. The closing theme reaches the threshold where the exposition had repeated, but leads instead to a coda in the tonic that recalls the opening theme.

Second Movement: Andante con moto in E major

The second movement alternates between two contrasting themes. The first is introduced by the low strings, brass and high strings playing in counterpoint. The second theme appears first in the solo clarinet before passing to the oboe.

The fragment of the scherzo intended as the third movement returns to B minor.

After Hüttenbrenner's revelation of the two completed movements of this symphony, some music historians and scholars toiled to "prove" the composition was complete in this form, and indeed, in its two-movement form it has proved to be one of Schubert's most cherished compositions. The fact that classical decorum was unlikely to accept that a symphony could end in a different key from its beginning, and the even more undeniable fact that Schubert had begun a third movement (of which the score he gave to Hüttenbrenner included the first page) seems to disprove the above-mentioned hypothesis.

Modern completions

In 1927-28, Felix Weingartner composed his Sixth Symphony, La Tragica (in memory of 19 November 1828) as a tribute to Schubert on the centenary of his death. The second movement of Weingartner's symphony is a realization of the Scherzo that Schubert had intended for the "Unfinished Symphony". In 1928, the anniversary of Schubert's death, the Columbia Graphophone Company held a world-wide competition to complete the symphony (see the article on the competition for citations). Probably about 100 completions were submitted, but also a much larger number of original works. The pianist Frank Merrick won the "English Zone" of competition and his scherzo and finale were later performed and recorded, but are now largely forgotten.

Only some of the completions — Merrick's is not one of them — make use of Schubert's sketched scherzo. The first movement of Joseph Holbrooke's Fourth Symphony, one of the British entrants for the competition, is mostly a performing version of Schubert's scherzo (the trio of which had to be completed), and a theme from the scherzo appears in his finale. Independent completions of the scherzo movement were made by Geoffrey Bush in 1944 and the conductor Denis Vaughan in about 1960.

More recently, the English musicologists Gerald Abraham and Brian Newbould have also offered completions of the whole symphony, using Schubert's scherzo and the entr'acte from his incidental music for the play Rosamunde. This movement had long been suspected by some musicologists to be the finale for this symphony. (In fact, it was played as a finale at the symphony's British premiere on 6 April 1867.) Both works have B minor as their fundamental key, they have identical instrumentation, the entr'acte is in sonata-form (as are all Schubert's symphonic finales) and they share a very similar mood. If the entr'acte indeed started life as the finale of this symphony, then Schubert evidently discarded it (probably at that stage unorchestrated) from the symphony and used it instead in the play, presumably only orchestrating it for this purpose and perhaps making compositional changes.

The Russian composer Anton Safronov has completed the 3rd movement based on Schubert's sketch and created a new finale for the symphony (some themes of it are based upon a number of Schubert keyboard works), which he has described as 'an attempt to move into the mind of the composer'. Safronov's completion was performed at the Royal Festival Hall in London on 6th November 2007 with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment as well as on 2nd October 2007 with the Russian National Orchestra (followed by the American tour in the early 2008), both conducted by Vladimir Jurowski. Due to the project's daring and unusual plan, Anton Safronov's completion has received varied criticisms (the definitely positive as well as the ambivalent and the negative ones).

The Cambridge professor of composition, Robin Holloway has realised the Scherzo, based upon, but not bound to, the sketches. His realisation has two trios, the first from the sketches, and the second entirely his own composition. It was premiered by the Cambridge University Musical Society on 18/06/2011.

See also

• 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

• Symphony No. 8: Free scores at the International Music Score Library Project.
• 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.