Program Notes: Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony

As I was in the airport Sunday night waiting three hours for my delayed flight to depart, I heard Schubert’s Eighth Symphony (“Unfinished”). Twice. That’s how long I was waiting. I thought there might be some irony there but was too tired to consider it.

I heard an open rehearsal of the San Francisco Symphony this morning, featuring Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony (“Romantic”). It was one of the first symphonies I heard live, in a concert with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. I was overwhelmed by the powerful brass and the dancing hemiola rhythms. My friend today said it “has something for everyone,” including lushly singing strings and in-your-face trombones.

I first heard Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony while in Germany. Former German Chancellor Willy Brandt had died, and the Berlin Philharmonic played the Unfinished at his state funeral. A whole symphony! This would never, ever happen in America. It was a stirring and beautiful performance, and the work has remained a favorite of mine ever since.

Here are my program notes for it, along with a portion of the work by Claudio Abbado.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759 “Unfinished”

Premiered 12/17/1865, Vienna

The two movements comprising the “Unfinished” Symphony were completed about the time Schubert contracted the illness that would lead to his early death. Perhaps he could not bear to return to it to create a full-sized symphony because of this association. It was given to his friend, Anselm Hüttenbrenner, who turned it over to the Vienna Musikverein for performance first in 1865, thirty-seven years after the composer’s death.

A partial manuscript to a third movement exists, but the facts around the composer’s intentions for a full-length symphony are disputed. In any event, one can hardly begrudge Schubert the missing movements. Despite only thirty-one years of life, he wrote over one thousand works! Schubert’s melodic gift is renowned through his many, inspired Lieder, though the “Unfinished” symphony is alone sufficient to convincingly demonstrate his immense talent. The variety and immediacy of the themes suffusing the symphony’s two movements are breathtaking.

The cellos and basses open with a lugubrious song fragment before settling into a percussive role beneath the violins’ shimmering soundscape. The winds bring in the principal theme, which gains haunting echoes and suspenseful layers before transfiguring into a rather happy, if subdued, waltz in the cellos, then the violins. The melody’s tail goes through development and leads to a repeat of the music heard thus far. The elusive theme that started it all is heard now for a third time, and Schubert grows it first deeper, then higher, longer, and more emphatic. After the earlier themes are reprised, this melody resurfaces and brings the movement to a close.

The second movement glistens at its beginning, so fragile that a whisper might upset it. The proportions are perfect, and with such grace! The clarinet’s solo entrance is the first hint that the happy sweetness won’t last. A melancholy seeps in and is taken up by the timpani and trombones. After a reprise a stormy development commences, finally resolved into the comfort of the music that began the movement. The “Unfinished” is powerful, satisfying music; perhaps it was left unfinished because it could not, need not be finished. Two movements, these two, might just be enough.

© Tyler S. Clark

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