Did Schubert Finish His Unfinished Symphony?
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- Опубликовано: 26 авг 2024
- Link to book composition lessons:
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In this video I discuss why Schubert might have actually finished his 8th Symphony in B Minor.
A special thanks as always to musopen.org and imslp.org for offering free public domain sheet music and recordings online.
To me the rosamunde entr'acte makes sense as the fourth movement - the opening alludes to the scherzo's main theme!
I love Newbould's completion and personally accept it as "canonical", just like Süssmayr's version of Mozart's requiem, or Zoltán Göncz's completion of Bach's Contrapunctus XIV. Incidentally, Newbould also wrote great completions of the "other" unfinished Schubert Symphonies D 708A, D 729 ("No. 7"), and D 936A ("No. 10") - the last probably dating from Schubert's last weeks. :)
BTW, in Newbould's monograph "Schubert and the Symphony" he actually answers your questions.
(1) Anselm Hüttenbrenner didn't lose anything. Blank pages follow the second page of the Scherzo in full score, so we know that Schubert didn't orchestrate any further. In fact, Schubert had cut this second page out before sending it to Hüttenbrenner, who received only the first page of the Scherzo - Schubert couldn't remove that, as it backed onto the last page of the Andante. Yes, Hüttenbrenner's behaviour is odd, but Newbould has a suggestion - Hüttenbrenner himself was a composer and may have resented Schubert's posthumous success. Hüttenbrenner's brother claimed that they couldn't find an orchestra willing to take it, but this seems doubtful (Newbould says that he "was perhaps making excuses").
(2) There are a bunch of theories for why Schubert did not finish the scherzo. Newbould's is that he simply left it as incomplete temporarily (to finish later), and just never got back to it. His evidence is that Schubert kept the piano sketches and the continuation of the scherzo, and that there may have been an opportunity to have the first two movements (alone) performed in time for the Styrian Society at Graz, to which he had promised a symphony. The fact that this makes it one of the more depressing cases of procrastination makes this seem unfortunately plausible to me. :) Martin Chusid has another theory that Schubert was embarrassed that his trio is similar to that of Beethoven's 2nd symphony: I find this less likely, since the resemblance is slight, and it didn't embarrass him for the Grand Duo (whose slow movement has a passage mimicking that of Beethoven's 2nd symphony much more obviously).
(3) Newbould was not the first to suggest that the Rosamunde Entr'acte is the finale of the Unfinished - in fact that *is* how it was played at the English premiere of the Unfinished, in 1867.
(4) Newbould thinks it is unlikely that many changes were made to the finale when it became the Rosamunde Entr'acte, because Schubert is known to have composed the incidental music for Rosamunde in great haste. However, he suggests that the ritardandi and fermatas at the beginning might've been one last-minute addition. He does not question the B major ending - in fact he thinks it parallels the shift from B minor to B major in the first subject group itself. Actually I also find the major ending of the first movement of the 4th symphony a bit abrupt, so I never thought to question this major ending either. :)
I'm a bit more partial to Carragan's completion myself (especially love the trio of the scherzo), but admittedly Newbould's still sounds really good. Unsure about the slow intro with Carragan's finale though.
I’d be astonished if the changes to the Finale when it became the Rosamunde entr’acte were minimal. That it was written in great haste might have affected its length, plus its role as an entr’acte which perhaps needed to be less epic than as a symphony finale.
There’s also the issue of the radical timpani retuning between the Scherzo and the Finale, which I’m surprised no one has brought up. I once played in the Newbould completion, and cheated by doing the retune on the two hand-tuned drums I was given during bars rest in the Scherzo, so that the conductor didn’t have to wait for me between movements, when in this case the gap ought to be comparatively short.
@@mikecole1633 Newbould's argument is partly based on the length: the entr'acte, according to him, is still "disproportionately big for the function assigned to it within Rosamunde". Among other things, he points out that the overtures used for Rosamunde don't have real development sections, whereas the B minor entr'acte has one of a full sixty bars. The B minor ballet in the Rosamunde incidental music uses the same thematic material as the entr'acte, and Newbould wonders if that was intended to conceal the out-of-place nature of the entr'acte.
With that said, only the discovery of the sketches for the entr'acte would clear this up. Newbould also admits that the first two movements of the "Unfinished" show changes from the piano sketches, so it's very possible that there were significant changes. Even if there weren't, Newbould also notes that Schubert might have made different changes were he using the sketch to write a symphonic finale instead of an entr'acte: Schubert may even have considered the Rosamunde entr'acte a failure if he were judging it as the finale to the "Unfinished". It's certainly possible, because he didn't score a 4th movement for the Unfinished at all. Maybe he was unsatisfied with the fragmentary score of the 3rd movement instead and gave up on the project before coming to the 4th movement at all, but it's also possible that he decided not to score the 4th movement as it didn't fit his idea of a symphonic finale. Either way, it's possible that Schubert had already rejected the Unfinished symphony by the time the Rosamunde project came along, so maybe he wasn't thinking at all about how well it would've worked as the Unfinished finale as that project would've been abandoned: he'd only have been thinking of how well it would work as an entr'acte. Personally, I find this scenario quite plausible - that Schubert wrote the sketch to be the finale of the Unfinished, but that he rejected that project and recycled the sketch for something else, developing it in a possibly different way.
But whether the entr'acte is the finale Schubert had in mind is a different question from whether it works as a finale. To that, I'd answer: yes, it works well enough, it's a work by Schubert, and it probably stems from material that at some point was intended as a finale for the Unfinished. We might as well play it to bring the Unfinished back to the tonic even if it might not be how Schubert would've finished the Unfinished as a symphony. After all, if it were actually the authentic finale, people would probably accept it as fitting in. :)
@@doublesharp4325 That's probably about right. The symphony did feel "Finished" when we played it, and I seem to recall went down well. The conductor in question, who was fond of completions, knew Newbould personally, and we did the Schubert 10th completion on another occasion.
As it exists I don't think the entr'acte is quite as wonderful as the first 2 movements of the symphony, but that seems to have been a problem Schubert often encountered, to find the dream finale to something. ("Reliquie" being a case in point, of course). I reckon the Scherzo would have been a good enough springboard had he finished it.
I dug out Chusid's essay (I have the Norton score reprint) and he seems to be saying that the whole Scherzo resembled Beethoven's 2nd Symphony Trio enough for Schubert to have possibly been worried (his opening in particular has a very similar rhythm), though I honestly don't think he would been right to abandon the whole symphony for that reason alone. After all, as you say, it didn't worry him so much on other occasions.
Your videos are so pleasing for the mind. I beg you to making more ! I would be very excited if you would do one on Scriabin, the topic of choice..The mystic chord or simply what you want.
I know I'm extremely late, but it was extremely satisfying going from the last video (about composing for yourself) which fades out with a theme from Schuberts Unfinished to this being the next vid. Talk about cheeky foreshadowing!
Edit: it was even the portion thats in the thumbnail for this video
Somebody noticed 😉
I didn't watch the video yet, but IMHO believe that Schubert *did* finish his No.8 Symphony.
Yeah. It makes more sense that he did finish it and the last 2 movements were lost. I mean, you run into something similar with Mozart's sonatas, whole movements or sections of movements having disappeared from the manuscript. K 545 has perhaps the least complete manuscript I have seen, less than a page's worth. But would you say Mozart didn't finish his sonatas just because you can't find more than a few bars of one or more of his movements in his manuscript? Of course not. I think something similar applies to Schubert's 8th symphony.
@@caterscarrots3407The difference is that the KV 545 was published in Vienna during Mozart's lifetime. We know he finished it and approved it for publication, most of the manuscript just hasn't survived.
I have always had my theories and musings on this, and while I don't have any actual factual background for my suggestion; I have always thought that the reason it wasn't complete was because the first movement is so good that he had trouble challenging it with other material to fit in the completed work. In this case I think if he had realized that the first movement should have been moved to the fourth movement it would have made a great finale and it would have been probably easier to write a new first movement to it. I wasn't aware of the existence of the third movement since i recieved my musical education at a small, unsophisticated state music college; but I had proposed at the time the following solution: First Movement, Second Movement, First movement no repeats. I love this work so much.
William Carragan also did a completion using the same Rosamunde theory for the finale-which, as others have pointed out, was not original with Newbould. I have done that version (and will be doing it again in January 2024.) The main difference in the Carragan version, besides some different material in the trio of the Scherzo, is that he extends the material in the Finale more than Newbould. He thinks that Newbould's finale is too short, and I tend to agree, somewhat, that the proportions are better with a longer finale. But the degree of overlap between the two versions-which is enormous- is both interesting and instructive. As for why he did not complete it-well, there are many unfinished pieces by Schubert, including some remarkable works, such as the Relique Piano Sonata in C, which also has a partly completed Scherzo-and also has a partly completed Finale, which, like the Trio of the Unfinished, fades away into a single line of music, abandoned in mid phrase
From what I remember of music history, the sonata form, (which is what the classical symphony is based on) started with the Italian overture. Where the overture form, I believe, was gradually expanded into separate sections with their own tempos. Which then evolved into three separate movements of music known as the sonata form. Starting with a fast movement, then followed by a slower movement, and ending with a movement of faster tempo. So with this in mind, it seems to me that any classical symphony that ends with a slow movement is necessarily incomplete. Which in Schubert’s case is not unusual. Since he left other symphonies unfinished. Therefore, I don’t think you can make the argument that Schubert’s 8th symphony is satisfactory as a two-movement work. It feels incomplete. And leaves wanting for something more. Something that will conclude. And something that will finish what it started.
There are even more incomplete symphonies from Schubert in different stages, from abandoned early to partially composed and orchestrated or fully available as piano particello. The Unvollendete is just the one known best, as it is the first one revealed. I tend to appreciate the incomplete works of the masters like Schubert and Bach (there his Kunst der Fuge) equal in their incomplete form as with well-done completions.
That repurposed segment sure looks like an evolution of the main motif of the first movement.
I'm a bit late to the party but here goes. You present an interesting analysis. But then at 10:10 you play the final few seconds from the second movement. I'm almost moved to tears. In fact, I am moved to tears. Is there anything more Schubert, or anyone else, could say after those few bars? Maybe Schubert thought the same. In which case it is indeed "finished".
Never “too late.” I wholeheartedly agree, that the piece is fine “as is.” However I doubt it was Schubert’s initial intention to leave the piece unfinished as evidenced by the scherzo he started sketching out.
Great quality video!
Beautiful and enlightening. Thank you.
I hate to rain on this parade too much, but I do need in the interest of accuracy to point out that the proposition that the Entr'acte in B min was the last movement of the 8th pre-dates Brian Newbould.
I used to have a copy of the 1971 Royal Liverpool Phil/Groves vinyl disc with the 3rd movement competed by the musicologist Gerald Abraham, and this recording used the Entr'acte as the 4th movement.
Indeed, a British performance in 1867 used the Entr'acte.
Only a few months separated the writing of the 1st 2 movements and the writing of the entr'acte.
Thank you for this most informative and interesting video.
In my opinion, Mario Venzago has done an excellent job of working out a performing version of the two last movements -- especially since he extensively fleshes out a main theme for the finale, based on the Ballet as well as the Entr'acte of Rosamunde.
Interesting I’ll have to check it out
@@MusicaUniversalis The finale in question has been recorded by the Kammerorchester Basel, and also by the Munich Symphony Orchestra.
Fantastic video as always
Wow ! Brilliant--;))
Great video!
Wonderful
Bottom line....listen to what you want. The Unfinished is a lovely work as Schubert left it, but I still appreciate Newbould's contributions.
I kind of like one of the themes from the first movement. But I don't like the fact that he abandoned such a symphony.
👌
I finished nothing, I’m pretty damn proud of myself. Lol.