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calimacA standard classical-era symphony has four movements, of particular kinds in a particular order. Schubert's Unfinished just has what would normally be the first two, and a partial outline (in piano score) of most of the third.
What happened to the rest of it? There are several theories.
1. It's complete and sublime just as it is. This is nonsense, for perfectly straightforward reasons of classical harmonic progression. Harmonically the Unfinished ends in the middle of a
, and in Schubert's day you just don't do that. (I was going to explain in my review that the second movement is in the tonic major of the subdominant, but my editor didn't think I could say that in a family publication.) The "It's perfect as it is" theory is the favored theory of those for whom every sneeze from a master is golden.
2. Schubert wrote the rest, but it got misplaced. Unlikely, given what we know of the manuscript history.
3. He got intimidated. Nobody else, even Schubert himself, had yet written a symphony fully assimilating the huge increases in scale and emotion that Beethoven had lately wrought. By this theory, Schubert just wasn't up to it yet. Possible: Schubert was going through a period when he found it hard to complete anything. But the two movements he finished were fully up to Beethoven's challenge.
4. He lost his inspiration. This is the theory I favor, because in the wake of the first two excellent movements, the third, frankly, is out of gas. He even tore what he'd written of it out of the manuscript score. See also above about not finishing anything.
5. He wrote the rest, but discarded the scherzo and took the finale out to use as the entr'acte for his incidental music for the play Rosamunde. This theory was proposed by Sir George Grove of musical dictionary fame, and is supported by today's leading scholar in this field, Brian Newbould. If you point out that the Rosamunde entr'acte doesn't work as a finale for the Unfinished, Newbould will serenely reply, "That would be why he detached it." But Newbould misses the point. Though the entr'acte is in the right key and in sonata form, it's in the wrong idiom, more genteel like Schubert's earlier symphonies. A bad finale could have been discarded; this one would never have been written for this symphony in the first place.
6. He didn't get around to it, so we should finish it for him. There have been several attempts to suit action to this theory over the years, but if Schubert couldn't finish it, what hope for anyone else? Next up to be forgotten about is the Russian composer Anton Safronov, whose completion received its U.S. premiere on Thursday.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
liveavatar and I went, and you can read all about it here.
The San Jose paper's reviewer began his review by praising the pianist (in the Brahms concerto that came with). The San Francisco paper's reviewer began by describing the conductor's glamour. Me, I wrote about Schubert.
What happened to the rest of it? There are several theories.
1. It's complete and sublime just as it is. This is nonsense, for perfectly straightforward reasons of classical harmonic progression. Harmonically the Unfinished ends in the middle of a
, and in Schubert's day you just don't do that. (I was going to explain in my review that the second movement is in the tonic major of the subdominant, but my editor didn't think I could say that in a family publication.) The "It's perfect as it is" theory is the favored theory of those for whom every sneeze from a master is golden.
2. Schubert wrote the rest, but it got misplaced. Unlikely, given what we know of the manuscript history.
3. He got intimidated. Nobody else, even Schubert himself, had yet written a symphony fully assimilating the huge increases in scale and emotion that Beethoven had lately wrought. By this theory, Schubert just wasn't up to it yet. Possible: Schubert was going through a period when he found it hard to complete anything. But the two movements he finished were fully up to Beethoven's challenge.
4. He lost his inspiration. This is the theory I favor, because in the wake of the first two excellent movements, the third, frankly, is out of gas. He even tore what he'd written of it out of the manuscript score. See also above about not finishing anything.
5. He wrote the rest, but discarded the scherzo and took the finale out to use as the entr'acte for his incidental music for the play Rosamunde. This theory was proposed by Sir George Grove of musical dictionary fame, and is supported by today's leading scholar in this field, Brian Newbould. If you point out that the Rosamunde entr'acte doesn't work as a finale for the Unfinished, Newbould will serenely reply, "That would be why he detached it." But Newbould misses the point. Though the entr'acte is in the right key and in sonata form, it's in the wrong idiom, more genteel like Schubert's earlier symphonies. A bad finale could have been discarded; this one would never have been written for this symphony in the first place.
6. He didn't get around to it, so we should finish it for him. There have been several attempts to suit action to this theory over the years, but if Schubert couldn't finish it, what hope for anyone else? Next up to be forgotten about is the Russian composer Anton Safronov, whose completion received its U.S. premiere on Thursday.
liveavatar and I went, and you can read all about it here.The San Jose paper's reviewer began his review by praising the pianist (in the Brahms concerto that came with). The San Francisco paper's reviewer began by describing the conductor's glamour. Me, I wrote about Schubert.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-19 11:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-19 11:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-20 12:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-20 12:34 am (UTC)If you're unsure of the spelling: Shubert was the theatrical brothers in New York. Schubert was the Viennese composer. (Next: Strauss and Straus.)
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Date: 2008-02-19 11:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-20 12:36 am (UTC)There are three substantial piano-score sketches, all in Bb and bound together. They were thought to be sketches for one symphony until someone, I think Robert Winter, bothered to look at the manuscript paper. It then became clear that there were three works sketched out. The last is from the last few months of Schubert's life, from the period when he was finished up Winterreise.
What I conclude is that he started more symphonies than he finished; at some point, it became an experimental form for him. Maybe he didn't have time to finish these, or moved on to other projects, or got sick and lost interest.
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Date: 2008-02-20 01:01 am (UTC)There are at least three completions of the E major, including one by Newbould, but like you I only have the Weingartner.
Then there's the fake Schubert symphony.
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Date: 2008-02-20 01:08 am (UTC)I should check my claim about Bb sketches. Maybe I meant D major sketches: it's been a long time.
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Date: 2008-02-20 01:23 am (UTC)Newbould counts six incomplete Schubert symphonies: one very early fragment, four from the 1818-22 period (two sets of D major sketches, the E major, and the Unfinished), and the one he was working on when he died. Of these the last three can be reconstructed into a reasonably complete form, so with the seven finished symphonies that makes ten.
I'm inclined to doubt the "he just lost interest and moved on" theory of the Unfinished, except as a supplement to one of the "he got stuck" theories, because with the completion of two movements, the Unfinished had gotten far beyond an experimental state. The whole period sounds more like an artistic crisis than an experiment.
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Date: 2008-02-20 01:38 am (UTC)