Symphony No. 8 “Unfinished”, D. 759

The symphony opens with eight bars for cellos and basses, pianissimo, playing a phrase in B minor. The violins then enter, and oboe and clarinet play together above them.

Schubert’s fair copy of these two movements passed to the brothers Josef and Anselm Hüttenbrenner. In 1860 Josef told the conductor Johann Herbeck that Anselm owned a “treasure”. Herbeck called on Anselm in Graz in May 1865, and an overture by Anselm shared the première programme.

After a short bridge led by the horns, the cellos begin a long melody in G major. The violins take it up over a syncopated accompaniment.

Heavy chords from the full orchestra interrupt the melody in G major. Schubert leaves silences between the chords. Fragments of the tune then pass through the closing passage.

Schubert set the symphony aside in 1822 for a commissioned piece and never returned to it. The reason is unknown. One theory holds that he found no finale to match the opening; others cite illness, lack of time and no prospect of a performance.

The development begins in E minor with the phrase that opened the symphony. The low strings play it first, and the higher strings take it up.

At the climax of the development the trombones play a variant of the opening phrase, first heard in the lowest strings, above the orchestra. The music stays in E minor through the long climax.

On 17 December 1865 Johann von Herbeck conducted the first performance in Vienna, forty-three years after Schubert began the score. He followed its two completed movements with the finale of Schubert’s Third Symphony.

Oboe and clarinet return over the violins after the trombones. Schubert brings back their melody in B minor and leaves out the eight-bar introduction.

In the recapitulation the cello melody returns in D major, a fourth below its first appearance in G major.

Stokowski and the Philadelphians recorded this symphony acoustically in 1924. They recorded it again in April 1927 using the electrical process, which, in Pristine’s words, conveys “the burnished sheen of the strings” in a swiftly flowing reading.

The recapitulation closes in B major. The coda returns to B minor and is built on the introductory theme, first heard in the low strings, and the movement ends with loud chords for the full orchestra.

Wolfgang Stähr wrote that on its third appearance the basses’ opening phrase sinks into the abyss and sets off howling and groaning, “as if graves were opening”.

Horns and bassoons play a two-bar phrase over pizzicato double basses. The strings follow with a long melody in E major. The opening two bars return at the end of the movement.

Wolfgang Stähr heard this Andante as a leave-taking without return. He pointed to the horn fifths, the bass lines, the string melodies with their cadences, and clarinet and oboe solos that “sound like farewells from songs of travel”.

Reviewing the Vienna première in 1865, Eduard Hanslick heard “musical thunder clouds” crossing the Andante. He wrote of how much Schubert achieved with a few horn figures and a clarinet or oboe solo.

The first violins play four bare notes outlining C♯ minor. The clarinet begins the second melody in that key, and the oboe continues it in C♯ major.

Schubert drafted the symphony first as a piano short score. The draft of this movement survives complete, with the end of the first movement and a scherzo that stops partway through its trio. After his death it passed to his brother Ferdinand; no draft of a finale has been found.

The full orchestra takes over in C♯ minor. Its closing passage reaches D♭ major, the same sounding tonic as C♯ major but written with flats. A short bridge leads back to E major.

The opening theme returns in E major after the full orchestra has played the closing theme. The strings play long phrases, and the winds reply.

Victor issued Stokowski’s recording of the symphony on three discs, 6663 to 6665, gathered in an album. Six matrices, recorded on 28 and 30 April 1927, supplied the six record sides for the two movements.

The second subject returns in A minor, a major third lower than its earlier C♯ minor. This time the oboe begins and the clarinet continues, which reverses their earlier roles.

The two-bar phrase that opened the movement becomes the first melody of the coda. Schubert extends it at length before the final return to E major.

In the coda the woodwinds play the first theme in A♭ major, a key far removed from E. The short violin transition figure follows, and the movement ends in E major.

A finale in B minor would normally follow. Soon after Herbeck found the score, George Grove suspected that the long entr’acte in B minor that Schubert wrote for Rosamunde in 1823 was meant for it. Brian Newbould and others have since argued the case.

The full score ends with this close in E major. On the back of its last page the manuscript continues into a scherzo in B minor, orchestrated for only a few bars before it breaks off. The title page is dated 30 October 1822, and Schubert lived another six years.