Symphony No. 8 (Schubert)
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Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 8 in B minor, commonly known as the Unfinished (German: Unvollendete), was started in 1822 but left with only two movements complete even though Schubert would live for another six years. A scherzo, nearly completed in piano score but with only two pages orchestrated, also survives. It has long been theorized that Schubert may have sketched a finale which instead became the big B minor entr'acte from his incidental music to Rosamunde, but all the evidence for this is circumstantial[citation needed].
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[edit] Early History
Although this symphony was written in 1822, Schubert gave the two completed movements in 1823 to Anselm Hüttenbrenner as representative of the Graz Music Society which had given him an honorary diploma. They were not performed until 17 December 1865, when they were conducted in Vienna by Johann Herbeck, who had persuaded Huttenbrenner to show him the score and who added the last movement of Schubert's Third Symphony as a finale [1].
Sometimes this work is referred to as Symphony No. 7 (it is referred to as such in the New Schubert Edition), since the other work sometimes referred to as Schubert's 7th was also left incomplete, but in a different way.
[edit] The completed portion
The key of the symphony was virtually unprecedented: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven wrote no symphonies in B minor, presumably partly because the key is a very difficult one for valveless brass instruments - there was no B natural crook for horns and trumpets. Schubert partly gets around this by writing for trumpets in E. His first movement starts in B minor, and modulates to a second subject in G major after a surprisingly short four measures of transition.
The two complete, and completely orchestrated movements, which are all of the symphony as it is performed in the concert repertoire, are:
[edit] First Movement: Allegro moderato in B minor
The symphony's first movement is in sonata form, opening softly in the strings followed by a melody sounded by the oboes and clarinets. A typical Schubertian transition consists of just four measures, effectively modulating to the sub-mediant key of G major (mm. 38-41). The second subject group--one of Schubert's most famous--is played by the celli and repeated by the violins. An emphatic closing theme features heavy sforzandi, and is based on continual development of the second subject. Commentators on the symphony reaching back as far as Brahms have noted the highly dissonant chord that ends the exposition.[citation needed] Here Schubert superimposes a tonic B in the bassoons over the dominant F# chord, creating a mixture of the two tonalities that evokes the end of the development in Beethoven's Eroica Symphony[citation needed].
The development section is extended and features a reworking of the primary theme group. Near the end, the flutes and oboes recapture their melodic role from the movement's beginning, preparing a transition to the recapitulation.
The recapitulation follows standard sonata form principles, except for a somewhat unusual modulation for the second subject. Instead of the conventional employment of the tonic (B minor), Schubert composes the second subject in D major (initially, we heard this theme in G major). The closing theme reaches the threshold where the exposition had repeated, but leads instead to a coda in the tonic that recalls the opening theme.
[edit] Second Movement: Andante con moto in E major
The second movement alternates between two contrasting themes. The first features counterpoint between the basses, horns, and violins. The second theme appears first in the solo clarinet before passing to the other woodwinds. Both themes are interrupted by episodes of counterpoint, and are repeated in variation.
The fragment of the scherzo intended as the third movement returns to B minor.
[edit] References to Schubert's unfinished symphony
- Leopold Godowsky composed a Passacaglia with 44 Variations, cadenza and fuge on the opening theme of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, for piano.[1]
- The principal theme is heard prominently and repeatedly in the movie Minority Report as Tom Cruise's character attemps to construct the yet-"unfinished" murders.
- The first subject of the first movement was also used on The Smurfs as the leitmotif of the villain Gargamel.[citation needed]
- It was also featured in an episode of The Simpsons, where Lisa's school band played the piece.[2]
- An episode of the Casper cartoon series was entirely centered on the two pages for piano of this symphony. In it, Schubert's ghost continuously tries to complete them, but his concentration is constantly interruped by street noises.[citation needed]
- A symphony is shown playing the No. 8 on a television in the film "Being There".[citation needed]
- Briefly sampled by Beck in the song "High Five (Rock the Catskills) from the album Odelay (1996).
- Japanese musician Yoshiki Hayashi used some themes of Unfinished Symphony in his rock symphony Art of Life (X Japan, 1993)
[edit] Modern completions and the Rosamunde entr'acte
After Herbeck's discovery of the two completed movements of this symphony, some music historians and scholars toiled to "prove" the composition was complete in this form, and indeed, in its two-movement form it has proved to be one of Schubert's most cherished compositions. The fact that classical decorum was unlikely to accept that a symphony could end in a different key from its beginning, and the even more undeniable fact that Schubert had begun a third movement (of which the score he gave to Huttenbrenner included the first page) seems to disprove the thesis[citation needed]. Yet as noted above B minor was difficult to score for brass instruments, and this might have prompted his abandonment of the work.
In 1928, the anniversary of Schubert's death, the Columbia Graphophone Company held a world-wide competition to complete the symphony (see the article on the competition for citations). Probably about 100 completions were submitted, but also a much larger number of original works. The pianist Frank Merrick won the 'English Zone' of competition and his scherzo and finale were later performed and recorded, but are now largely forgotten.
Only some of the completions - Merrick's is not one of them - make use of Schubert's sketched scherzo. Orchestrations of the scherzo only (the trio of which had to be completed) were made by Geoffrey Bush in 1944 and the conductor Denis Vaughan in about 1960.
More recently, the English musicologists Gerald Abraham and Brian Newbould have also offered completions of the whole symphony, using Schubert's scherzo and the entr'acte from his incidental music for the play Rosamunde. This movement had long been suspected by some musicologists to be the finale for this symphony.[citation needed] (In fact, it was played as a finale at the symphony's British premiere on 6 April 1867.) Both works have B minor as their fundamental key, they have identical instrumentation, the entr'acte is in sonata-form (as are all Schubert's symphonic finales) and they share a very similar mood. If the entr'acte indeed started life as the finale of this symphony, then Schubert evidently discarded it (probably at that stage unorchestrated) from the symphony and used it instead in the play, presumably only orchestrating it for this purpose and perhaps making compositional changes.
[edit] References
- Corey Field, editor. The Musician's Guide to Symphonic Music: Essays from the Eulenburg Scores. Schott Music Corporation
- Brian Newbould, Schubert and the Symphony: A New Perspective (Toccata Press, 1992)
- About the Composition: Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759 ("Unfinished")
- ^ A recording of this composition of Godowsky, by the pianist Rian de Waal is available on Helios CDH-55206
[edit] Audio files
Ogg file format - http://www-plan.cs.colorado.edu/henkel/fso/index-en.html - CD1
- Performers
- ENSEMBLE: Fulda Symphonic Orchestra
- CONDUCTOR: Simon Schindler
- Recording
- LOCATION: Fürstensaal des Stadtschlosses Fulda
- DATE: 2000-04-09 (recorded)
- ALBUM: 1. Benefiz Symphonie-Konzert
- TRACKNUMBER: 6 - 7
- License
- LICENSE: EFF Open Audio License (http://www.eff.org/IP/Open_licenses/eff_oal.php)
| Movement | Time | File size | External download |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Allegro moderato | 14:28 | 21.1 Mb | http://www-plan.cs.colorado.edu/henkel/fso/cd1/track06.ogg |
| 2. Andante con moto | 10:45 | 15.2 Mb | http://www-plan.cs.colorado.edu/henkel/fso/cd1/track07.ogg |
[edit] External links
(Correction -- the PDF shows C-naturals in measures 198 and 200. These should be C-sharps.)
