Unfinished Symphony

Symphony No. 8 by FRANZ SCHUBERT, 1822, set in the melancholy key of B minor. A profoundly ROMANTIC semi-symphony, it has but two complete movements. Despite its fragmentary condition, the symphony became Schubert's most famous orchestral work. The manuscript also contains a few measures of the SCHERZO (third movement).

While Schubert never intended it to remain unfinished, there is a mystery as to why it was left incomplete. Schubert intended the work to be a token of acknowledgment of his election as an honorary member to the musical societies in Linz and Graz in 1822, when he was 25 years old. The manuscript eventually wound up in the cluttered Viennese room of Anselm Hüttenbrenner, a friend of the composer's. It received its first performance 37 years after Schubert's untimely death at the age of 31.

On Schubert's death centennial in 1928, an international competition was held for the completion of the Unfinished Symphony. However, worldwide protests against this desecration of a musical monument changed the requirements to a work in the spirit of the master. The prize was given to the Sixth Symphony of Kurt Atterberg, who declared afterwards that his score was a deliberate imitation of the style of the judges of the competition. In recent years, completions have been made of the scherzo, but the total lack of sketches for the finale render any attempt to perform the "entire work" completely absurd.