Why Was the "Unfinished" Unfinished?

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.) 

Tears and Moonlight

When I first encountered Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 27, No. 2, quasi una Fantasia—famously known as the “Moonlight”—I was heartened by the fact that I could play the first few bars and that they sounded like something. Never mind that the beginning of the Adagio sostenuto is just a single repeated broken chord; I was a teenager and sincerely wanted to express drama, misery, mystery. Not to mention seeming to be a better piano player than I really was.

Mrs. Pack, my teacher, coolly informed me that the sonata had three movements and that I might want to get acquainted with the other two. Undaunted, I practiced the Adagio—the easy movement--for hours (or at least half-hours) on end and achieved my goal when I played it for my friend Audrey and she cried.

Since that time, I have probably taught the slow movement of the “Moonlight” several hundred times, the middle movement two or three times, and the third movement not even once. “Try to remember that it is their first encounter with this music,” Mr. Sheldon reminded me when I complained about always having to teach Beethoven’s “Für Elise”, Mozart’s C Major, the “Moonlight” and Debussy’s Clair de Lune. “Remember how you felt when you first heard it.”

There is power in the Adagio of Beethoven’s Op. 27, No. 2. How else can I explain the lengths to which some students will go to try to play it? One student, barely in Level Two, taught himself the first page using diagrams of the keyboard with the hands drawn in.

Terry, whom I encountered at the grocery store yesterday, lettered every single note of the Adagio and triumphantly played the last chord after three months of diligent practice. He refused, however, to play it in the annual student recital. The piece was already on the printed program, so I announced that I would play it in Terry’s place.

As I played, I noticed stirring and tittering from the audience at the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, the seaside concert hall where we used to hold our recitals. I was well into the Adagio when I saw the reason.

Terry’s wife, Cynthia, had cut out a cardboard moon and, using a rod and reel, was lowering the moon on a line from the balcony until it swung right over the big Steinway.