I've been writing program notes for the Coastside Community Orchestra concert May 9, and thought it might be fun to post them in advance. Why Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony, Number Seven or Number Eight, depending, remained unfinished is one of those music mysteries which has always invited speculation, and sometimes downright fiction. Here's my take on it. (The concert will be at 7 P.M. at Coastside Lutheran Church, 900 Cabrillo Highway, Half Moon Bay.)
Franz Schubert
(1797-1828) Symphony in B Minor, D. 759 “Unfinished”
Franz Schubert himself said that he was born for no other
purpose than to make music. And make music he did, producing in his short life
19 string quartets, 21 piano sonatas, 600 songs, ten operas, seven masses,
volumes of work for piano solo and piano duet, and nine or ten symphonies
including the “Unfinished.”
Harold
Schonberg says in Lives of the Great Composers that Schubert “seemed content to pour out page after
page of music, whether or not it was performed.” He left no estate—no property
or progeny-- except for music manuscripts scattered all over Vienna. Robert
Schumann discovered Schubert’s unplayed ninth symphony, the so-called “Great C
Major” in a box left at a brother’s house, and Felix Mendelssohn conducted the
world premiere of the work in 1839, eleven years after Schubert’s death.
Schubert
was the twelfth of 14 children and became a boy soprano in Vienna’s court
chapel at the Imperial and Royal Academy, where he received his musical
education. He never traveled far from Vienna. By the age of eleven, he was
already a prolific composer. He may not have had quite the gravity of his
contemporary, Beethoven, but no one could resist the singular beauty of his
melodies and the startling innovations in his key-shifting harmonies. The house
concerts—Schubertiades—arranged by his friends were famous.
The
original seventh symphony, in E major, was sketched out in 1821 and was never
completed, so the B Minor work done in 1822 became Number Seven. Number nine,
the symphony unearthed by Schumann, was written in the last year of Schubert’s
life. Another symphony known as the Gmunden-Gastein (for two places Schubert
had spent summer vacations) has been lost, though some elements may have been
used in the Great C Major.
Just
why the Seventh remained unfinished has been the subject of much creative
speculation. The symphony was dedicated to the Graz Musical Society which had
just nominated Schubert, and in 1822 the composer left it in the hands of a
member, who apparently laid it aside and never delivered it to the society.
Since Schubert lived six years after that, composing all the while, chances are
that he—and the friend—simply forgot about the symphony, or that the friend
lost the last two movements.
Schubert
was a pallbearer at Beethoven’s funeral and died of typhoid a year later at the
age of 31. He was buried beside Beethoven in what today is called Schubert
Park, in Vienna.
In
1894 Franz von Suppé (“Light Cavalry Overture,” “Poet and Peasant,”etc.) wrote
an operetta, “Franz Schubert,” which one reviewer described as “wonderful
biographical kitsch based on Schubert tunes,” and in 1916 another musical play
loosely based on Schubert’s life had its premiere in Vienna, setting words to
his famous melodies. Known as “Blossom Time” in the adaptation by Sigmund
Romberg, the musical was wildly successful.
Although
classicists may have cringed at the popularized treatment of Schubert’s music,
the operetta did in fact accomplish posthumously Schubert’s hopes of writing
for the stage, and the play’s success was due almost entirely to the beauty of
Schubert’s unforgettable melodies.
(Watercolor by Howard Gilligan, from Julius Schmid's 1897 painting of a Schubertiade.)
