The Unfinished Symphony

Yesterday on the radio, I heard part of Franz Schubert’s 8th Symphony.  It was only a part, because, famously, Schubert never finished it.  This piece of music is commonly known as the “Unfinished Symphony,” and it was approximately half-completed in 1822.

Schubert died at age 31, so one might assume that the symphony is unfinished because he died too young while composing it, but that is not the case.  In fact, it appears that Schubert worked on, and then abandoned, this symphony some six years before his death.

The radio announcer on yesterday’s program explained that there are several theories about why Schubert left this particular project incomplete, but her best guess is that he simply became sidetracked.  He just moved on.

I was intrigued, and did a little research.  

Not only did Schubert stop in the middle of writing this symphony, but a year later, he later sent it to a friend who also put it aside.  It went unnoticed for 42 more years.  Nobody publicly performed the Unfinished Symphony until 1865, which was 37 years after Shubert’s death.  

I am not a music historian, so I can’t speculate with any authority, but I wonder what happened.

Maybe Schubert was so busy with new ideas that he simply decided to do something else that interested him more.  Or, maybe the symphony wasn’t going in a direction that he liked, so he put it away to let it rest, and then never got back to it.  Perhaps he used this particular symphony as a springboard that inspired other pieces of music, and he no longer felt a need to revisit the original.

In the end, Schubert never saw his 8th Symphony performed, so he missed out on the reactions of the conductor, the orchestra, and the crowd.  He received no financial gain.  He heard no praise.

What Schubert received from his efforts toward the Unfinished Symphony was simply the experience of writing it.  We have no way to know if that experience was joyful, emotional, or cathartic.  

But we always benefit from our work in some way, even if we simply gain more experience and practice.

What stands out to me, though, is the fact that we are still listening to, and discussing, a piece of music that was half-done, almost two centuries ago.

People still find connection to work that is imperfect and incomplete.