Discovering, completing & realizing the masterpieces

What does one do with an unfinished utterance? Do you cobble together a complete version or leave it be?

Schubert’s “Unfinished” symphony is the archetype of the unfinished, but is unique in the sheer perfection of its two completed movements. One doubts whether Schubert or any other man, would have done better ...amidst the lyrical stoicism of his typical works, it is a majestically eloquent , searingly passionate statement.

The romantic notion of the work is that the composer’s early death prevented him from completing it: this is not absolutely true as it was written in 1822, some years before Schubert’s death (in 1828) and was succeeded by his other great symphony, the “Great” C major symphony (1826). On the other hand, if you look at someone like Brahms, who took as long as 17 years to complete his 1^st symphony, a composer can be allowed any amount of time to get things right! Beethoven too, would carry around themes for years before the finished product.

Of course, some works are left unfinished because the composer simply lost interest or inspiration or suffered some such jolt to his creative drive. Is it right to pluck these fragments from obscurity? To mention Brahms again, the great German composer was notoriously cagey about his attempted works, regularly destroying them, rather than allow the world at large to envision his creative struggles.In the case of the older composers, fragments and half-completed works abound: Mozart, Haydn, Schubert...not all of these were meant to reach the public.

Mind you, sometimes, it just doesn’t feel right to let a composer be the judge of his own works, sometimes his standards are set too high! Sibelius, for example, wrote 7 symphonies but one of the tantalising tales about him, is that he also wrote an 8^th, which disappointed him so much that it was consigned to the trash can.

There genuinely are, however, works which were left unfinished at a composer’s death: the finest (Mozart’s Requiem, Mahler’s 10^th symphony) are just so magnificent that they cry out for an audience, even for a completion.

Completion is what “realising” classical music is about...over the years, musicologists and musicians have strived to complete the incomplete works they were passionate about, either composing small portions by themselves (as did Mozart’s student Sussmayr in completing the Requiem), or using earlier material.

Schubert’s Unfinished used to be performed with the Finale of his 4^th symphony even in the 19^th century, while a later performing version was created using materials from his sketches for the later movements—none of this has really made audiences happy and conductors today leave well alone, only playing the 2 movements that Schubert himself wrote.

On the other hand, Deryck Cooke’s performing version of Mahler’s 10^th symphony (only the 1^st movement was complete when he died) is regularly performed and recorded, because, being a musicologist, Cooke was really able to get under Mahler’s skin.

Returning to Sibelius and his trash can, though one may wring one’s hands at the tale, sometimes masterpieces have actually been salvaged from similar oblivion. The two greatest stories of discovery in music were Mendelssohn’s unearthing of Bach’s St Matthew Passion from an obscure attic in Leipzig and Schumann’s discovery of Schubert’s “Great” C major symphony in a cupboard at the composer’s brother’s home in Vienna.

Just as one has to feel thankful that Max Brod disobeyed his friend Franz Kafka’s earnest request to destroy all his writings, so one has to breathe a sigh of relief that these immortal masterpieces could reach us despite the odds!