The Eight Symphony (1822) in B Minor by Franz Schubert (1797-1828) known as “Unfinished” opened a new page in the history of European symphony after Beethoven. Having been written two years earlier before the last Beethoven’s Ninth symphony it nevertheless belongs to a new era – the art of romanticism. Schubert managed to embody in music moods and feelings which were quite typical for many of his contemporaries. With this symphony music world has introduced a new theme, which will form the essence of biggest XIX century works: the inner world of feelings of man (not Beethoven’s struggling hero), who intensively lives through contradictions of existence, hesitating, doubting and searching for solution. This human being is capable of bright feelings and strong spiritual gust. But unfortunately this gust doesn’t lead to a victory of life-affirmative ending – there is no fitting soil for such a victory in the surrounding reality. At its tension of conflict “Unfinished” symphony doesn’t fall short before Beethoven’s dramatic works, however conflict is shifted to other, lyrically-psychological sphere.

Many musicologists attempted to get into mystery of this unfinished symphony. And one of the points of view is that two of its parts so fully reveal the meaning and fit each other that listener could get an impression of an absolute completeness of the composition. Probably the author might have been getting the same feeling at the process of composing. But it’s worth mentioning that here are examples in Schubert’s work when he abandoned already begun and in many respects finished composition. And such uncompleted compositions often bear stronger imprint of innovations than many of completed ones.

German musicologist A. Schering has got quite an interesting version of it. He tried to connect the content of symphony with an autobiographic novel “My dream” written by composer himself. The date of writing the novel (July of the 1822) coincides with the appearing of project of “Unfinished symphony”. The novel tells in an allegoric form about a deep spiritual discord which Schubert has lived through for real: a composer’s struggle for following his mission repeatedly brought him to quarrels with father, to exiling from family. “With a heart full of endless love to them, who despised me, I set off to distant countries…”

There are two parts in the novel: already described spiritual drama forms content for the first of them. The Second one tells about an ideal sphere of art, which brings peace and relief to human soul.

And indeed, the content and basic mood of both parts has analogies with two parts of symphony. Besides musical images are so bright and expressive that they are percepted as if full of events and intense dramatics. That’s why unfinished symphony time and again gave occasion to program interpretations characteristic to romantic era in general.
Symphony remained unknown for forty three years. Schubert sent the score of two composed parts as a gift to the Stirian music society as a sign of gratitude for being selected an honored member of this society. However the society hasn’t received the symphony. Notes were kept at one of the members of society, composer Huttenbrunner until 1865, when he highly unwillingly gave them for performance to conductor J. Herbeck. Symphony took place for the first time in the concert of Viennese musical society on December 17th 1865 under the direction of Herbeck. This performance signed a beginning of symphony’s recognition which now became his most popular symphonic work.


The work on the last Ninth symphony in C Major was completed in the March of 1828, several months before the composer’s death. It could be rightfully considered that “big symphony” towards which composer went all his creative way.
Symphony amazes with its largeness of form, variability of content and at the same time by deep inner integrity: a global-folk, heroically-epic origin unites all three parts of the series. P. I. Tchaikovsky admired by this “gigantic work, distinct with power and richness of inspiration which has been put in it”, in which he noted “beauty of harmonization and freshness of folk element, prevailing in melodic image”.

Themes of symphony are mostly song-like. Schubert aimed to “vocalize” whole musical tissue fulfilling it with supporting vocal matters. But along with this, music is saturated with dance rhythms – not only Austrian, but also Hungarian, Slavic. “What a pleasure – told Robert Schumann – to fill this richness everywhere, whereas in creation works of some others you are waiting for the end and feel rather disappointed that it hasn’t come.

Fate of this work was hard. Soon after composer had completed the work under symphony he passed the score to the Viennese music society but musicians found it too long and difficult, and performance of symphony hasn’t happened. Only eleven years later, thanks to Robert Schumann, who found the symphony among Schubert’s manuscripts, kept at his brother in Vienna, the score was sent in Leipzig to F. Mendelssohn – a director of concerts in Gewandhaus. The first performance of symphony occurred in March of 1839 under the direction of F. Mendelssohn and it initiated the rise of interest to Schubert’s symphonic legacy.

There is still muddle and confusion concerning numeration of symphonies. In Germany and Austria was established the tradition to consider the last “Large” symphony (1825-1828) – C-dur - the seventh one and symphony H-moll “Unfinished” (1822) which was written before the previous – eighth one, in consequence of the fact that it was found and performed much later. Considering all this, another symphony in E-dur is completely dismissed from this line (1821), though it might have been exactly the seventh one if it would have been finished. Although it wasn’t instrumented by the composer himself, it was completed as a draft. This symphony was finished by other composers (John Barnett and Felix Weingartner) and was twice performed on a concert stage. But it isn’t included in the canonic list of symphonies. In the CD series of Schubert performed by the Academic Orchestra of Leningrad’s Philharmonic Society under the direction of Alexander Dmitriev “unfinished” symphony is marked with eighth number and “Large” with ninth one according to our tradition.