The phrase “unfinished” often carries a very heavy weight when it’s attached to works of art. We naturally assume a work’s incompleteness is due to a tragic event–death, perhaps–that stilled the artist’s voice before he or she was able to complete an artistic vision. Then, when we view, listen to, or otherwise experience this incomplete art work, we tend to attach a significant degree of pathos to it, pondering all the “what if” and “if only” speculations about how the artist might have completed the work had he or she been able.
Conductor Mark Russell Smith has chosen two unfinished symphonies for this weekend’s performances by the Quad City Symphony Orchestra. Both works come from 19th-century Vienna, but their dates of composition are separated by almost seventy-five years. One of these works–Anton Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony–was left incomplete at the composer’s death. But the companion work–Franz Schubert’s Eighth Symphony–is unfinished only because its composer never got around to completing it. No tragedy was involved in its creation, other than one of distraction or even perhaps, indolence.
FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828)
Symphony No. 8 in B Minor (“Unfinished”)
In a life which, like Mozart’s, was tragically short–merely thirty-one years long–Franz Schubert created a legacy of compositions numbering well over eight hundred. In songs alone, he wrote more than six hundred. Such an amazing outpouring of creativity is difficult to comprehend, particularly when we take into account Schubert’s chronic ill health and frequent financial difficulties.
He was born in Vienna only six years after Mozart’s death. Living as he did at the end of the Classical era and beginning of the Romantic, Schubert’s place in music history has always been difficult to characterize. As a link between the two eras, Schubert was drawn to the strong Classical sense of form and balance, but combined it with pioneering ideas in harmony and tonality. He was hardly a neglected genius during his lifetime; but the Viennese public’s familiarity with his music was limited chiefly to his songs, which received widespread acclaim. Unfortunately, Schubert’s symphonic works did not fair so well, perhaps because the public’s attention was often focused on music of Vienna’s other famous composer, Beethoven. Moreover, most of Schubert’s greatest symphonic and chamber works were not published until a generation or more after his death. But in spite of his early death, his musical legacy and particularly his gift for lyricism did live on through the works of later Viennese composers.
In the fall of 1822 Schubert finished the first two movements of a four-movement symphony in the key of B minor. Work on another composition interrupted his progress on the B minor symphony, and he never returned to it to add the final two movements. We now number this symphony as his Eighth, and it has earned the memorable nickname of “Unfinished.”
No one knows why Schubert never completed the symphony. More than a hundred years of theories have failed to shed much light on the work’s history. We do know that Schubert gave the score as a gift to a friend whose family kept it out of the public eye for some forty years. Not until 1865 did the symphony receive its first performance.
The Eighth Symphony’s two movements contain some of Western music’s most recognizable melodies. The first movement has three thematic ideas that are quickly introduced. The first is the mysterious introductory passage for low strings; the second, a plaintive melody played by the oboe; and the third, the well-known song-like theme played by the cellos.
The second movement is quiet and sustained in contrast to the nervous energy of the first movement. The gentle lyricism is dominated by numerous solos for woodwinds.
ANTON BRUCKNER (1824-1896)
Symphony No. 9 in D Minor
It is difficult to imagine the shy, unassuming Anton Bruckner in the middle of one of the 19th-century’s great musical brouhahas. But unwittingly he became a pawn in a controversy that began in Vienna around 1865 and pitted the music of Richard Wagner–viewed by some as the wave of the future, by others as the end of all that was respectable–against the more traditional and conservative music of Johannes Brahms. The fight was also as much about the men’s personalities as their music. Brahms was a solid and respected resident of Vienna. Wagner, on the other hand, lived a flagrant life of moral excess and self-promotion.
Brahms and Wagner camps sprang up with strident partisans on either side. The Brahms forces had an ally in Vienna’s powerful music critic, Eduard Hanslick, whose intense dislike of Wagner and bias toward Brahms was very clear in his articles and concert reviews. By 1868 the fight had escalated to new levels, and when Bruckner stumbled into the middle of it, his musical future seemed doomed.
Until that time, Bruckner had spent his professional life as a church organist and music teacher in a small, isolated village far from the cosmopolitan music center of Vienna. He was an excellent organist and his gifts at composition had already received some recognition. So in 1868, at the urging of friends, Bruckner took the bold step of moving to Vienna to seek his musical fortune. He promptly blundered into the middle of the “Brahms vs. Wagner” turmoil. Bruckner was a great admirer of Wagner and had dedicated an early symphony to him. His own music also sounded a bit like Wagner’s, and that was good enough for the anti-Wagner forces. They labeled Bruckner a Wagnerian and summarily dismissed him as a hack. As one commentator later stated, “Bruckner strayed onto the battlefield and became the only casualty.”
The controversy and criticism dumbfounded the unsophisticated Bruckner. Sadly, he gave critics much of their ammunition. His curious quirks made him the laughing stock of Vienna, from his old-fashioned rural manners and ill-fitting peasant clothing, to his habit of deferring to authority.
But one overriding characteristic of Bruckner’s personality was his insecurity. While it never interfered with the creation of his music, it certainly affected the long-term integrity of what he had written. Well-meaning friends had only to mention “improvements” to his works and Bruckner would be plunged into agonizing self-doubt, more than willing to cut and change works that had been totally original and unique. The result today is a whole series of first editions of his major works, followed by revised editions, often followed by revisions of the revisions.
But in spite of Bruckner’s personal curiosities, his music was truly distinctive, and over time it slowly earned an appreciative audience. Much of Bruckner’s music was liturgical, with his strong Catholic faith and long service to the Church clearly evident in many works. On the other hand, his nine symphonies, written over a thirty-three-year period, were not liturgical. But they share a common thread with his church works–a sense of the awe-inspiring, of wonderment, and of power and mystery. To help convey this sense, Bruckner used the musical language of Richard Wagner, following many of the same techniques of slow-moving harmonies, majestic full brass, and intensely emotional writing for the strings.
It is his use of the brass section that sets off Bruckner’s musical sound from anyone else. Great blocks of brass harmonies function like vertical support beams in a tall building, holding the other elements in place. A first impression of this unique style may be one of much starting and stopping as the music abruptly alternates from quiet to thunderously forceful and back again. Some commentators describe the music in terms of the architecture of medieval cathedrals, where all elements–soaring arches, deep-hued stained glass windows, massive stone columns and buttresses–point heavenward in a great affirmation.
Bruckner began work on his Symphony No. 9 in 1887 while he was also at work on revisions, yet again, to several of his earlier works. By the time he had completed those other projects and could devote himself fully to the Ninth Symphony, his health had started to fail, causing him to slowly and laboriously struggle to complete each of the symphony’s four movements. By October 1894 he had finished the third movement and written extensive drafts for the final movement. But his worsening condition slowed progress on the finale so much that when he died on October 11, 1896, he was reportedly still at work on the music. Several composers have attempted to complete the final movement from Bruckner’s sketches, each achieving questionable results due to the nature of the challenge. Most performances today choose to present the Ninth Symphony as Bruckner left it, in its truncated, three-movement form.
The Ninth Symphony has been called both a conservative work and one that points the way to the future expressionistic experiments of post-World War I music. The first movement begins in quiet for some moments before suddenly building to a soaring theme led by the French horns. The movement’s principal theme soon follows, a forceful and stern unison melody led by the full brass section. A secondary theme of song-like lyricism appears a bit later in the strings. These two thematic groups interact for many minutes until the movement concludes with a broad and powerful statement by the full orchestra.
The second movement Scherzo has three large sections–the opening scherzo itself, a contrasting middle section (trio), and a repeat of the opening scherzo. Scherzo movements are usually dance-like and Bruckner follows tradition with this brisk movement. But the dancing element of the scherzo section is strictly lead-footed as the pounding, stomping triple rhythm predominates. The contrasting middle section Trio is yet faster and somewhat lighter in mood. Gradually the music slows, then returns to the ungainly pounding of the opening scherzo to conclude.
The third movement is a slow and heartfelt Adagio. Bruckner knew he was dying and the Adagio’s noble and quasi-religious atmosphere is both exalted and accepting. But it is also here that Bruckner is at his most harmonically daring: from the very first two notes–an angular, dissonant upward leaping interval by the strings–to the anguished and dissonant climax for full orchestra some twenty minutes later. Only after this point does the music resolve and take on a resigned, almost celestial character.
Program notes by Dennis Loftin
