Schubert's Unfinished

CRITIC'S CHOICE:  Author Damian Fowler selects this video of Schubert's magnificent Unfinished Symphony from Classical TV’s library of free video treasures.

• WATCH THE VIDEO NOW: Sylvain Cambreling conducts Schubert:  Symphony No. 8 ("Unfinished") and Mass in E-flat major  (FREE)

FOR YEARS, SCHUBERT scholars and biographers have tried to solve the riddle of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony.  The composer wrote two movements in 1822, six years before his early death at the age of 31.  He’d also started work on a scherzo, sketching out a further 40 measures before breaking off.  Abruptly it seems, he abandoned the symphony.   Why would Schubert, having written some of the most sublime music he’d ever produced, stop here?

In order to answer this question,  one critic points out, “an entire literature of conjecture has arisen as a result.”   Another writer suggested that Schubert thought the music sufficiently finished and, breaking with the convention of the day, left it after two movements.  But the sketches of the intended third movement disprove this theory.  Other notions propose that Schubert had a “temporary intermission of creative power,” and faced with what he’d already written, was unable to match the mastery of the opening.

Fiction too has weighed in on the matter.  A lesser-known British movie, Unfinished Symphony, made in 1934, has Schubert falling madly in love with an aristocrat whose family oppose her marriage to such a lowly composer.  In despair, Schubert tears up the last pages of his symphony leaving it forever unfulfilled, just like his passion.  In other words, as the New York Times critic put it, a woman, “shattered the composer’s inspiration as it was soaring to its divine consummation.”

And the symphony does soar, but it took decades before anybody noticed.  At the time of it composition, Schubert was primarily known in Vienna as a song writer - his most famous lied at the time was Erlkönig - which was how he made his living.  Even so Schubert aspired to write more ambitious works, operas and symphonies which he hoped might elevate his reputation.   He wrote the Unfinished Symphony in 1822, but it didn’t get performed or published until 1865 - some 37 years after his death.  By then, Schubert was recognized as a Romantic composer of great genius, and the symphony considered a masterpiece.   In an essay on Schubert’s music, Dvorák wrote, “His Unfinished Symphony and the great one in C [his 9th symphony] are unique musical contributions to musical literature, absolutely new and original, Schubert in every bar.”

So what was the crisis that stopped Schubert from finishing this masterpiece?   The most likely explanation, according to modern biographers, was that Schubert contracted syphilis, a disease that would be his death sentence.  It changed him forever and tormented him for the remaining six years of his life.   The proximity of his own mortality arguably led him to compose some of his greatest works - the last three quartets, two piano trios, a string quintet, 6 piano sonatas, the “Great” C major symphony and the remarkable song cycle Winterreise.

Schubert, like Beethoven, did indeed have a late period of great productivity which found the composer meditating on darker thoughts (including the Mass in E-Flat, written in 1826, which has the solemn grandeur of a Requiem).  It seems clear that the Unfinished Symphony marked a watershed moment for the composer when his life was shattered forever.  Is it any wonder he didn’t finish the piece?

• WATCH THE VIDEO NOW:  Sylvain Cambreling conducts Schubert:  Symphony No. 8 ("Unfinished") and Mass in E-flat major  (FREE)

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If you like these Schubert works, you might also like:

• Matthias Goerne (documentary)  

This documentary follows the critically acclaimed German baritone for a year, from Carnegie Hall to the Zurich Opera. He performs music by Schubert, Schumann, Bach, Berg and Mozart with Brendel, Harnoncourt, Norrington, Mussebach and von Dohnanyi.