New release of the Day - a Schubert stunner!

[Pabmusic]

What a mess. Now that I won't be calling it the "Unfinished" any more I guess I'll just identify it by its key. I don't expect the numbering issue is ever going to be definitively resolved!

How right you are.

[Barbirollians]

I note that the late Nikolaus Harnoncourt had no time for such completions of the Unfinished . His view was that Schubert stopped part way through the scherzo as he decided he had nothing left to say in the piece.

[Pabmusic]

I note that the late Nikolaus Harnoncourt had no time for such completions of the Unfinished . His view was that Schubert stopped part way through the scherzo as he decided he had nothing left to say in the piece.

It was certainly more complicated than that.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It was certainly more complicated than that.

Indeed - as the late Charles Mackerras was aware.

[Richard Barrett]

Nevertheless, any arguments as to what Schubert's intentions were are forever irresolvable. The validity or otherwise of the four-movement B minor symphony doesn't depend on such arguments, but on the intelligence and musical abilities of the performers and the receptiveness, imagination and personal taste of listeners. Who and what one may think of as "Schubert" is something that changes through history (including one's own personal history) and between individuals. The Webern song arrangements on the same CD were written as Schubert himself might have written them, although in this case we know he didn't write them and had no intention to, and are played on instruments of Schubert's time in a historically informed style. Some might think of that as an anachronistic mess on several levels, while others might find it a welcome and rather beautiful addition to their listening repertoire which somehow transcends all that.

[Lion-of-Vienna]

I wouldn't presume to give a reason why Schubert left the B minor symphony unfinished but in order to understand why this happened we need also to consider why he left so many other works incomplete. These include, as has been mentioned previously, several other symphonies but also string quartets, notably the Quartettsatz D703 and piano sonatas such the Reliquie Sonata D840 and at least 4 others. Mozart too had a tendency to leave works unfinished but they are much smaller proportion of his total output than Schubert's unfinished works. I always feel that Mozart left some pieces in a state where he could come back to them and finish them off fairly quickly when he had a need for them and then went on to pieces which he needed more urgently, perhaps for a commission or for one of his own performances. I think that with Schubert the reasons go much deeper. Was it just in his nature to want to go on to other things before finishing what he had already started?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I think that with Schubert the reasons go much deeper. Was it just in his nature to want to go on to other things before finishing what he had already started?

I think that we can only speculate about this, but IIRC, most of the incomplete sketches come form "later" in his (all-too-short) life, when he was expanding his harmonic and tonal "vocabulary", and seeking ways to accommodate into his lyrical gifts the dramatic scale of Beethoven's work (which - again, IIRC - he initially disliked as a young man?). I think that this "fits in" with his seeking tuition in Counterpoint from Sechter (which would have required him to abandon original composition for a number of years - at a time when he knew that his time was precious) - I wonder if he was feeling that his skills couldn't get him where the Music was leading him? That - in the case of the "fragmentary" sketches at least - what he learnt from setting down these ideas gave him impetus that was better served in the works he subsequently went on to finish?

(Random thoughts here, as you might have guessed.)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The thing with the Unfinished Symphony is that is how Schubert chose to leave it. If he had wanted to tack on bits of Rosamunde surely he would have done so ?

I’ve just bought the Marriner set of the 10 Schubert symphonies. I hadn’t heard the Newbold completions, and the only completion of no.8 that I’d heard was the one by Gerald Abraham, which seems to have been largely forgotten.
I do find completions of abandoned works to be very interesting and worthwhile.

[gurnemanz]

Several years ago Dave started a Gastein Symphony thread. He drew attention to a v cheap download of miscellaneous Schubert recordings from ClassicSelect World (still around at £1 for 13 hours' worth). I had already acquired and listened to these recordings and commented on that thread: "The download contains many interesting performances, including the E major Symphony - also not the Gastein but actually meant to be a symphony - called the 7th and in places sounding similar to the Great Ninth. It was orchestrated from Schubert’s sketches by Weingärtner and comes over very nicely in another 1952 recording, also VSSO, this time with Franz Litschauer."

Subsequent to this and wishing to get better to grips with the knotty business of later Schubert Symphonies, I then acquired Symphony No 10 & other Unfinished Symphonies from Charles Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra on Hyperion. Well worth having this disc, for the performances and also for the plain man's guide to Schubert Symphonies which is included in Brian Newbould's accompanying sleeve notes :

Symphony in D major. 40-bar fragment in orchestral score, D2B (1811?)
Symphony No 1 in D major, D82 (1813)
Symphony No 2 in B flat major, D125 (1814/5)
Symphony No 3 in D major, D200 (1815)
Symphony No 4 in C minor (‘Tragic’), D417 (1816)
Symphony No 5 in B flat major, D485 (1816)
Symphony No 6 in C major, D589 (1817/8)
Symphony in D major. Piano sketches for two movements, D615 (1818) (Recorded on this CD)
Symphony in D major. Piano sketches, D708A (1820/1) (Recorded on this CD)
Symphony ‘No 7’ in E major. Skeleton in orchestral score, D729 (1821)
Symphony ‘No 8’ in B minor. Known as the ‘Unfinished’, D759 (1822)
Symphony ‘No 9’ in C major, D944. Known as the ‘Great’ and almost certainly the ‘lost Gastein-Gmunden symphony’, D849 (1825/6)
Symphony ‘No 10’ in D major. Piano sketches, D936A (mid-Autumn,1828) (Recorded on this CD) The D number allocated to this work in the second edition of the Deutsch Catalogue is misleading and was based on a surmise of its chronology which has since been superseded. The number D985C would be nearer the mark

[oliver sudden]

Thanks for bumping this—as a new arrival I hadn’t seen the original thread and had also somehow missed these newer attempts at the Ununfinished. I look forward to catching up.

[Alison]

The Forum at its best!