on the subject of schubert's "unfinished" symphony: "was bedeutet die...

Schubert's "Unfinished" SymphonyAuthor(s): Maynard SolomonSource: 19th-Century Music, Vol. 21, No. 2, Franz Schubert: Bicentenary Essays (Autumn,1997), pp. 111-133Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/746894Accessed: 11/01/2010 07:34

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Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony

MAYNARD SOLOMON

Portions of a short score sketch of the B-Minor Symphony survive, containing a draft of the Allegro moderato starting with m. 249 (i.e., just before the modulation to the second subject in the recapitulation), the entire Andante con moto, 112 measures of a scherzo, marked Allegro, as well as sixteen measures of the trio.' The title page of the full score reads, "Sym- phony in B Minor by Franz Schubert, Vienna, 30 October 1822" (Sinfonia in H moll von Franz Schubert m. p. Wien den 30 Octob. 1822),2 a date that probably refers, in conformity with

? 1997 by Maynard Solomon.

I am grateful to Kristina Muxfeldt, Richard Kramer, and Lawrence Kramer for their stimulating comments and sug- gestions. References to Schubert: A Documentary Biogra- phy, ed. Otto Erich Deutsch, trans. Eric Blom (London, 1946), are abbreviated as Deutsch, SDB; references to Schubert: Memoirs by His Friends, ed. Deutsch, trans. Rosamond Ley and John Nowell (London, 1958), are abbreviated as Deutsch, Memoirs.

'The autograph is in the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna (A 244); see Sinfonie in h-Moll ("Die Unvollen- dete"): Franz Schubert: Vollstandiges Faksimile der autographen Partitur und der Entwiirfe, ed. Walther Duirr and Christa Landon, Publikationen der Sammlungen der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, ed. Otto Biba, vol. III (Munich, 1978). 2For a facsimile of the title page, see Deutsch, SDB, p. 256.

the composer's custom, not to the date on which sketching of the composition was started, but to the date on which he began to write out the full score. If one assumes the work on the sketches and score to have been more or less continuous, the Symphony was almost certainly written in the weeks shortly before that date and started, it would appear, immediately following completion of the second version of the Mass in AN, D. 678, the last page of which bears the date "September 1822."3 The existence of a partial full score and extensive sketches for the scherzo make it certain that, whatever his original intentions may have been, Schubert was now planning to write a four-movement work and thus-at that moment-regarded the Symphony as unfinished. The ongoing state of the work is strikingly self-evident in the fact that the last page of the full score contains the first nine measures of the scherzo. And Schu-

3The paper bears the same watermark as a paper used, among others, for the "Wanderer Fantasy," D. 760-the autograph of which is dated November 1822 by Schubert-and the Lieder, Die Mutter Erde, D. 788, and Pilgerweise, D. 789, both dated April 1823. See Robert S. Winter, "Paper Studies and the Future of Schubert Research," in Schubert Studies: Problems of Style and Chronology, ed. Eva Badura-Skoda and Peter Branscombe (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 222, 224.

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1 9TH bert's failure to inscribe the Symphony on a list CENTURY of his recent compositions, in a letter dated 7

December 1822 to his friend Josef von Spaun, also implies that as of that date he did not view the work as finished.

That is why, in the most prevalent account, it is said that Schubert set out to compose a four-movement symphony but, after a false start on the scherzo, abandoned the work as a fragment. But that does not altogether settle the question, for there are other ways to account for Schubert's shifting intentions in the course of writing his B-Minor Symphony. For example, it is conceivable that in the course of its working out the Symphony took an unexpected structural and rhetorical turn that made a continuation unnecessary, even impossible. In this reading, one can presuppose that Schubert, finding the "original" four-movement plan no longer relevant to his purposes and having decided against completing the drafted scherzo, carefully excised from the full score the page containing the continuation of the scherzo (mm. 10-20)4 and dispatched the Symphony-which he had come to regard as complete in two movements- to be considered for a concert performance.

Thus, the existence of the sketches and partial full score for the scherzo need not be taken as definitive indications that the B-Minor Sym- phony is indeed unfinished, although they surely do tell us that at some point in the course of its composition Schubert contem- plated casting the Symphony in four movements. But the meaning of the scherzo is not transparent; it can be understood in a variety of ways: by leaving those measures in the full score he may have meant to signal that a scherzo was intended along the lines indicated and that he would furnish the remaining installments if asked to do so.5 On the other hand, when he

4The manuscript is now in the Wiener Mannergesang- Verein, facs. in Christa Landon, "Neue Schubert-Funde: Unbekannte Manuskripte im Archiv des Wiener Manner- gesang-Vereines," Osterreichische Musikzeitschrift 24 (1969), 299-323 (at p. 316). Landon, who discovered it, writes that it "appears to have been kept by Schubert, and to have remained with his family after his death" (Landon, "New Schubert Finds," Music Review 31 [1970], 215-31 [at p. 226]). 5As suggested in Peter Giilke, Franz Schubert und seine Zeit (Laaber, 1991), p. 201.

broke off his effort to orchestrate the scherzo, Schubert may have reached a crux: he would have to decide either to pick up where he had left off or to explore an alternative solution-or to abandon the effort altogether, either for lack of a performance opportunity or because he no longer considered a continuation to be a com- positional necessity. His failure to complete the orchestration of the third movement or to sketch a last movement could signify that he had not been able to visualize a finale appropriate to the already completed movements, or even as dissatisfaction with the traditional symphonic structure. Thus, although the interrup- tion of the scherzo in the autographs can be read to validate the idea that the B-Minor Sym- phony remains unfinished, that is far from being the only reasonable reading.

On additional reflection, moreover, it turns out that even Schubert's original intentions can be thrown into question: it may be hypothesized that he actually set out to write a two- movement symphony, intending to create an unusual symphonic form, analogous to, inspired by, or in competition with Beethoven, whose innovative Piano Sonatas in E, op. 109, in AS, op. 110, and in C Minor, op. 111, the last of which is a two-movement sonata, were completed by mid-1822. In this improbable- but not entirely excludable-scenario, Schubert temporarily drew back from the implications of so risky a prospect and tried to compose a conventional scherzo with the purpose of adapting the unusual opening movements to the requirements of a four-movement cycle. Unsuccessful in this endeavor, however, he reverted to the two-movement plan, leaving the evidence of his conflicted feelings on the last page of the manuscript, on which he had boldly left the opening of the scherzo, as though to underscore his refusal to retreat from his original conception. To carry such speculations even further, one can visualize the possibility that Schubert may early on have thought about the Allegro moderato as a dramatic concert overture-his "Coriolan" or "Egmont" or "Iphi- genie in Aulide"-and then converted it into the first movement of a symphony. The movement's tierce de Picardie ending in the sketches (of which, more later) could be adduced as evidence of such an intention.

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I shall try in what follows to determine if there is anything in the historical and documentary record that may enable us somehow to choose among these alternative explanations for Schubert's two-movement Symphony and to see what such an investigation may imply about the aesthetic structure of the work.

II It isn't known what prompted Schubert to

compose his B-Minor Symphony, whether it arose from an inner compulsion or was written in hope or anticipation of a public performance. In earlier years, he had sketched movements or even complete outlines of symphonies that he presumably might have taken up and completed, given an appropriate performance occa- sion. Such were two symphonic movements in D, D. 615 (dated by him "May 1818"), sketches for a Symphony in D, D. 708A (ca. 1821), and the continuous draft of a Symphony in E, D. 729 (dated "August 1821"). Certainly, it was Schubert's ambition to give a grand concert along the lines of Beethoven's public "Aka- demien," as is known from an 1824 letter to his friend, the artist Leopold Kupelwieser, in which he expressed the hope of giving such an Academy featuring his own large-scale works, including a symphony: "I wrote two Quartets and an Octet, and I want to write another quartet, in fact I intend to pave my way towards grand symphony in that manner.-The latest in Vienna is that Beethoven is to give a concert at which he is to produce his new Symphony, three movements from the new Mass and a new Overture.-God willing, I too am thinking of giving a similar concert next year."6

Or, perhaps, Schubert, who had been an auxiliary member of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna since 1821, had learned later in 1822 that he was soon to be proposed for honorary membership in several other musical societies, which might be inclined to mount performances of some of his more ambitious compositions.7 And, indeed, Schubert was

6Letter of 31 March 1824 to Leopold Kupelwieser, Deutsch, SDB, p. 339. 7For a suggestion along these lines, see Martin Chusid, "The Historical Background," in Franz Schubert, Sym- phony in B Minor ("Unfinished"): An Authoritative Score,

shortly thereafter elected an honorary member of two Austrian musical societies-one in Linz, the other in Graz. The Linz Musikverein, founded in 1821 and headed by such close friends of Schubert as Josef von Spaun and Albert Stadler, named him an honorary member in August 1823 along with court singer Johann Michael Vogl during their visit there.8 To the Linz Society, however, he sent only a tenor aria-from Das Zauberglockchen, D. 723- which was publicly performed in due course.9 The Styrian Musikverein, founded in 1815 in Graz, was much more distinguished, numbering among its honorary members such luminaries as Beethoven, Salieri, Abbe Stadler, Eybler, and Moscheles, along with lesser notables like Mosel, Diabelli, Mayseder, Haslinger, Kiesewetter, and Josef Sonnleithner. Although by then it had performed only one of Schubert's works-the vocal quartet, Das D6rfchen, D. 598-there was immediate approval of Johann Baptist Jenger's nomination, on 10 April 1823, of his friend, "the composer, Herr Franz Schubert of Vienna, for admittance as a nonresident honorary member, the said composer, although still young, having already proved by his compositions that he will one day take a high rank as tone-poet, and be sure to show gratitude to the Styrian Musical Society for having first made him an honorary member of a not unimportant association." Schubert was notified of his election by a letter of mid-April 1823, which read: "The services you have so far rendered to the art of music are too well known for the Committee of the Styrian Musical Soci- ety to have remained unaware of them. The latter, being desirous of offering you a proof of their esteem, have elected you as a nonresident honorary member of the Styrian Musical Soci- ety. A diploma to that effect as well as a copy of the Society's Statutes is enclosed herewith."10

ed. Chusid, A Norton Critical Score (rev. edn., New York, 1971), pp. 7-8. 8See Deutsch SDB, p. 288. 9On 15 November 1824; see Deutsch, SDB, pp. 383-84. I?Deutsch, SDB, pp. 274-75. Jenger, a military official and an excellent pianist, served as Secretary of the Graz Musikverein from 1819 to 1825; he then moved to Vienna. The letter was signed by Jenger and Johann Nepomuk Ritter von Kalchberg, respectively secretary and chairman of the Society's executive committee.

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MAYNARD SOLOMON Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony

19TH The diploma itself expressed the Society's sat- CENTURY isfaction at having "the honor of apprising you,

Franz Schubert, Esq., by the present diploma of your nomination as a non-resident honorary member, in full recognition of your already generally acknowledged merits as a musical artist and composer"; and the appended statutes noted that "honorary members in absentia . . . are expected to do their best to further the Society's welfare, even at a distance."'1

Schubert was pleased to receive the honor and took it as a potential offer of a valued performance opportunity. His response, in a letter of 20 September 1823, could not have been clearer in stating the manner in which he intended to express his gratitude:

Worshipful Music Society [L6blicher Musikverein] I am very greatly obliged by the diploma of honorary membership you so kindly sent me, and which, ow- ing to my prolonged absence from Vienna, I received only a few days ago.

May it be the reward of my devotion to the art of music to some day become wholly worthy of such a distinction. In order to give musical expression to my sincere gratitude as well, I shall take the liberty as soon as possible of presenting your worshipful Society with one of my symphonies in full score.

With the highest regards, I remain, the most grateful, devoted and obedient servant

of a worshipful Society [Eines loblichen Vereines] Franz Schubert12

'Deutsch, SDB, pp. 276, 275. '2Letter of 20 September 1823 to the Styrian Musikverein, Deutsch, SDB, pp. 289-90; Schubert: Die Dokumente seines Lebens, ed. Deutsch (Kassel, 1964), pp. 199-200 (trans. amended) (facs. in Richard Wickenhausser, "Der steiermarkische Musikverein in Graz," Neue Zeitschrift ffir Music 72 [1905], 466-69; Beilage, p. 499). As a good- natured jest, Schubert's letter was designed to look like a certificate or diploma granted by him to the Musikverein, with the words "Loblicher Musikverein" and "Eines loblichen Vereines" appearing in bold calligraphy across the top of the letter and above Schubert's exaggeratedly formal signature in cursive script. Missing the humor of Schubert's response, a recent paper has proposed that the letter is inauthentic, allegedly fabricated or copied by Josef Huttenbrenner. See R. Bozic, "Franz Schubert, die 'Unvollendete' u. der Steiermark. Musikverein," in 175 Jahre Musikverein ffir Steiermark, ed. E. Kaufmann (Graz, 1990), with facs. on p. 34. The matter is summarized in Schubert Lexikon, ed. Ernst Hilmar and Margret Jestremski (Graz, 1997), p. 203 (see also pp. 118, 444). Proffered as evidence are the unusual design and the signature, which is said to have been copied from the "Unfinished" Symphony's autograph score. But the similarity in the signatures results from the fact that both were written by

Thus, Schubert promised to supply a symphony to the Styrian Music Society. He may have delayed sending the two movements until sometime after August 1824, and, inasmuch as they were already conveniently at hand at the time of his election, this suggests that he may not initially have considered them wholly appropriate for the purpose. But in the course of time he did fulfill his commitment by forward- ing the B-Minor Symphony in full score as it has come down to us.

One conceivable inference from these par- ticulars is that Schubert himself may have considered the work to be complete as of the date he forwarded it to Graz. After all, he had explic- itly informed the Society that he would send a symphony in full score, and he subsequently sent a two-movement symphony in full score, the title page of which unequivocally reads "Symphony in B Minor"-" Sinfonia in H moll." But several scholars have understandably found it difficult to imagine that Schubert would send an incomplete work and thereby risk offending or alienating members of an important musical association, one that numbered on its rolls many celebrities and several of his personal friends. Better, it would seem, not to send any work than to send one that might have had the untoward effect of diminishing the prospect of performances in Graz, not only of this symphony, but of other of his works. Still better, in its place Schubert could in relatively short order have scored the already drafted Symphony in E of 1821 or supplied another work from his stockpile of manuscripts.

Schubert left a large number of fragments, lone movements, and unfinished works, but so far as I can tell he never sought to have an incomplete work publicly performed. By con- trast, the B-Minor Symphony was actually sent to a patron in reciprocation for a high honor; it was sent in the hope of a major performance and was sent after considerable deliberation and as a conscious choice. Scholars who are convinced that the Symphony is unfinished have therefore been confronted with a dilemma, for

the same author; and the numerous minor points of difference in detail between them indicates that they were done independently of one another.

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their belief appears to be inconsistent with the fact that Schubert sent the score to the Styrian Music Society. Would he have sent a work that he himself considered to be a fragment?

One renowned scholar, Alfred Einstein, an- swered this question most forcefully when he wrote that it is "quite unthinkable that Schubert, with all his tact and discretion, would ever have presented the Society with an unfinished fragment."13 And the dean of Schubert studies, Otto Erich Deutsch, added: "It does not seem credible . . . that Schubert should have thought of the possibility of a performance of the work in its fragmentary state."14 One way out of this impasse has been to deny that the Symphony really was sent to the Styrian Musikverein. And that is the turn the argument has taken in recent decades, with con- tributors to the standard music encyclopedias asserting that the Symphony actually was given not to the Musikverein, but to one of its leading members, composer Anselm Hiittenbrenner, in whose private possession it remained, unknown and unperformed, until 1865. Writing in The New Grove, Maurice J. E. Brown confi- dently asserted that

recent disclosure of documents from the Huittenbrenner family archives shows that Schubert gave the manuscript .. . in its incomplete state, to Josef Huittenbrenner some time in 1823, to pass it on to his brother Anselm as a private gift (not, as long believed, as an acknowledgment of his election to the Styrian Music Society). This was probably in payment for a debt or an obligation; Anselm had a perfect right to retain the score.15

Even earlier, Hellmut Federhofer, the author of the Hittenbrenner entry in the standard Ger- man music encyclopedia, Die Musik in Ge- schichte und Gegenwart, claimed that Anselm Huttenbrenner had been unjustly maligned for having suppressed Schubert's work and for

'3Alfred Einstein, Schubert: A Musical Portrait (New York, 1951), p. 202. '4Deutsch, SDB, p. 290. '5Maurice J. E. Brown, "Schubert, Franz," The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1980), vol. 16, p. 761. Brown's authority is Felix Huittenbrenner, "Anselm Huttenbrenner und Schuberts H- moll Symphonie," Zeitschrift des Historischen Vereines ffir Steiermark 52 (1961), 122-37.

keeping the manuscript as his private possession: "That Schubert meant the Unfin- ished Symphony as the symphony which he was to send to the Styrian Musikverein in Graz in 1823 in thanks for naming him an honorary member is not proven."16 Despite these and similar contentions, which I shall take up in further detail, a powerful chain of documentary evidence leads from Schubert's election as a member of the Society to his letter affirming his intention to send a symphony, to the fact that the B-Minor Symphony did end up in Graz, and in the hands of the man who became Presi- dent of the Musikverein in 1825 for a period of fourteen years and thus was ideally situated to appropriate it.

It is not known precisely when Anselm Huiittenbrenner received the score from his brother Josef, who reportedly was assigned to carry it to Graz. The first mention of the Symphony's existence occurs in a letter dated 4 April 1842 from Huittenbrenner to Josef, who had served Schubert as a helpful amanuensis for several years up to the spring of 1823.17 In it, Anselm included the Symphony on a list of five

16Hellmut Federhofer, "Hiittenbrenner," Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Friedrich Blume (Kassel, 1949-86), vol. 6, col. 850. This same position is taken by Otto Biba, who suggested that the work might not have been sent to the Musikverein because "one can hardly imagine that a fragmentary composition would have made a particularly fitting gift" (Otto Biba, Franz Schubert: Ausstellung der Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek zum 150. Todestag des Komponisten [Vienna, 1978], p. 238). Most recently, Ernst Hilmar discounts the possibility that Huttenbrenner "consciously suppressed" the Symphony and finds it "not unusual" to own a Schubert manuscript, which, he claims, were not particularly valued in mid- nineteenth-century Vienna. See Schubert Lexikon, p. 202. See also John Reed, Schubert, The Master Musicians (London, 1988), p. 103; M. J. E. Brown and Hans Ferdinand Redlich, "Franz Schubert," Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, vol. 12, col. 119; Brown, "Anselm Hutten- brenner," The New Grove, vol. 8, p. 829. 17There is little evidence of a continuing close association between Schubert and Josef Huttenbrenner after April 1823; however, the Hittenbrenner brothers joined Schubert for dinner at Sophie Miller's in May 1826; they and Schubert may have visited the dying Beethoven together on 19 March 1827; and Schubert used Josef to transmit a letter of 27 September 1827 to Frau Marie Pachler in Graz. See Deutsch, SDB, pp. 505, 527, 618, and 670-73. A report to Kreissle maintained that Schubert found Josef Hiitten- brenner "almost repugnant," despite his "undeviating veneration and readiness to serve" the composer (Deutsch, Memoirs, p. 175).

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original Schubert manuscripts in his possession, namely Die Forelle, D. 550, Der ziirnende Diane, D. 707, Thirteen Variations in A Minor on a theme by Anselm Hfittenbrenner, D. 576, the Deutsche in Al Major ("Trauerwalzer"), D. 365, no. 2, and the Symphony, about which Anselm noted, "The unfinished symphony in B minor is marked: Vienna, 30 October 1822." Deutsch established that the list was prepared for possible use by Viennese collector Aloys Fuchs, who in the years 1842 to 1849 was compiling material for a thematic catalog of Schubert's works.18 Thus, it is revealing that Fuchs's list, while it optimistically made available two blank staves for incipits of a symphony to follow those for the symphonies in C and E, eventually contained no reference to the B-Minor Symphony, suggesting that in the end Josef Huttenbrenner chose not to furnish any further details about it.

It is remarkable-especially in light of the furor that followed the emergence from obscurity of the C-Major Symphony in 1839-that Anselm did not mention the Symphony in his lengthy "Fragments from the Life of the Song Composer Franz Schubert," which he labori- ously prepared and furnished to Franz Liszt in 1854, or in his letters about Schubert to would- be biographer Ferdinand Luib (1858). Nor did he communicate the fact of the Symphony's existence to Ferdinand Schubert, who had been trying to arrange for posthumous publication and performances of his brother's works. He did not even mention that he had prepared a complete piano four-hands arrangement of the Symphony in about 1853, which was never put to any use.19 To Liszt, he avowed: "With regard

"Deutsch, Memoirs, pp. 401-02, 407-11. "After No. 8 of the symphonies two staves are left unused, clearly for the B minor Symphony" (p. 410). '9The arrangement, the manuscript of which is presently

in the archive of the Wiener Mannergesang-Verein, is listed in Huittenbrenner's Werkverzeichnis of 29 October 1858. See Deutsch, Memoirs, p. 443; and Landon, "New Schubert Finds," p. 228. According to Rudolf Feigl, Klar um Schubert: Beseitigung von Irrmeinungen, Fehlangaben usw. (Linz, 1936), p. 27, the arrangement may actually be in Josef Huittenbrenner's hand. See also Schubert Lexikon, p. 203. If true, it probably indicates not that Josef wrote the arrangement, which he always attributed to Anselm, but simply that he made a fair copy of his brother's arrangement, whose name is on the title page.

to my friend, I am only putting on paper what still remains accurately in my memory after such a long time; the things I only dimly recall about him I leave untouched";20 but there is no reason to believe he had forgotten Schubert's Symphony. His failure to mention the work is a transparent sign of his uneasiness about his right to it.

From the start, of course, Anselm had found himself in the typical quandary of those who acquire valuable property without any demon- strable proof of ownership. And he responded to his predicament in the customary ways: first, by suppressing the information that it was in his possession; and later on, by promoting a convenient claim that it was given to him by its author. By the late 1850s, the Hittenbrenners were thinking about surrendering the autograph, but hoping to gain some personal advantage from doing so. It is to their credit that they never made an attempt to profit financially from the autograph, whose great musical and commercial value was clear to them.

Anselm remained mute from first to last and never personally set forth what he knew about the Symphony or the provenance of the autograph. The silence was eventually broken in a series of communications from Josef Hitten- brenner, presumably with his brother's authorization. In response to an 1858 question- naire from Luib, Josef wrote, "To Anselm Schubert also dedicated a symphony in B Mi- nor, which, however, is not finished; it can hold its own with any of Beethoven's."21 Two years later, Josef, who considered his brother Schubert's peer as "the spiritual heir and suc- cessor of Beethoven and the Mozart of this century,"22 set in motion an effort to release the "Unfinished" Symphony from its seques- tration in return for performances of Anselm's works by the distinguished Viennese conduc- tor and Kapellmeister Johann Herbeck, who directed the concerts of the Gesellschaft der

20Deutsch, Memoirs, p. 185. 21Josef Huttenbrenner to Luib, ca. 1858, Deutsch, Memoirs, p. 76 (trans. amended). 22Josef Hiittenbrenner to Alexander Wheelock Thayer, 8 October 1860, Deutsch, Memoirs, p. 190. Josef called himself in this letter "Schubert's prophet, singer, friend and pupil" (ibid.).

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Musikfreunde as well as those of the Wiener Mannergesang-Verein. He wrote to Herbeck, extolling his brother as the inheritor of Schubert's mantle as a master composer of Lieder and ballads, listed his brother's operas and symphonies, promised to describe his church music in a subsequent letter, and urged Herbeck to "make a selection" from "this treasure trove" for performance. In an obvious signal that he was seeking a quid pro quo, he then conveyed his startling news:

He [Anselm] possesses a treasure, however, in Schubert's "B minor Symphony," which we place on a par with the great C major Symphony, his instrumental swan song, and every one of Beethoven's.

Only it is not finished. Schubert gave it to me for Anselm, as thanks for having sent him, through me, the honorary diploma of the Graz Musikverein.23

It is not clear why it took Herbeck, who was a frequent visitor to Graz, five years to pursue the matter to a conclusion. Perhaps he was not sanguine about the outcome of negotiations with the Huttenbrenners about performances of Anselm's compositions, which he regarded as "obsolete and pedantic." This is gleaned from Herbeck's biographer, his son Ludwig, who got the impression from his father that Anselm Huttenbrenner, "who had anxiously guarded the manuscript in his desk for full forty-three years, would rather consign the work to destruction than to publish it."24

Meanwhile, the Hiittenbrenners began publicly to acknowledge the existence of their prize: an article on Anselm in the Graz Tagespost for 8 August 1863 reported that he "arranged for pianoforte four-hands a symphony in B [sic] by his departed friend Schubert, unfinished though it was."25 And for its entry on Anselm Hittenbrenner, Josef provided Wurzbach's standard Austrian biographical dictionary information about the Symphony: "Schubert, Hiitten-

2-Josef Hfuttenbrenner to Johann Herbeck, 8 March 1860, cited in Ludwig Herbeck, Johann Herbeck: Ein Lebensbild (Vienna, 1885), pp. 164-65. See also Deutsch, Memoirs, p. 430. 24Herbeck, Johann Herbeck, Ein Lebensbild, p. 166. 25Anon., "Ein steirischer Tondichter," Tagespost (Graz), 8 August 1863, quoted in Felix Huttenbrenner, "Anselm Huttenbrenner und Schuberts H-moll Symphonie," p. 133.

brenner's friend, whom he [Schubert] usually called his musical mainstay, dedicated to him a symphony, unfortunately unfinished, which is to be found in Hittenbrenner's possession and which is arranged for piano four-hands."26

The matter threatened to become a scandal in 1865, when Heinrich Kreissle von Hellborn, in the first major biography of Schubert, expressed his dismay that the Symphony had been held under "lock and key" for forty years by a man who claimed to be Schubert's faithful friend. In a listing of the composer's greater works for the year 1822, he wrote:

A Symphony for orchestra in B Minor, which Schubert presented in half-finished condition- namely, the state in which it still remains-to the director of the Musikverein at Graz, Anselm Huittenbrenner, in gratitude for granting him a diploma as an honorary member of that society. Ac- cording to information furnished by Josef Huittenbrenner, the first and second movements are entirely finished, and the third (scherzo) partly. The fragment, in the possession of Herr Anselm Huittenbrenner, of Graz, is said to be of great beauty- especially the first movement. If this be so, Schubert's intimate friend would surely do well before long to emancipate from lock and key the still unknown work of the master he so highly honours, and intro- duce the symphony to the devotees of Schubert's muse.27

Kreissle's exhortation led to the release of the Symphony from its long obscurity. Stirred to action at last, Herbeck arrived in Graz on 30 April 1865 and on the very next day had so satisfactory a meeting with Anselm Hiutten- brenner that he came away with Schubert's score in exchange for a promise to perform Huttenbrenner's C-Minor Overture in Vienna. It is worth reproducing Herbeck's recollection of the climactic moment of the event: "I still have a quantity of things by Schubert," said the seventy-year-old Huttenbrenner: "Therewith

26Constantin von Wurzbach, Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich, 1750-1850 (Vienna, 1856-91), IX, 406ff., quoted in Felix Huittenbrenner, "Anselm Huttenbrenner und Schuberts H-moll Symphonie," p. 133. 27Kreissle von Hellborn, Franz Schubert (Vienna, 1865), pp. 255-56; abridged trans. in Kreissle von Hellborn, The Life of Franz Schubert, trans. Arthur Duke Coleridge (London, 1869), vol. I, pp. 257-58 (trans. corrected).

117


the old gentleman went to an old-fashioned desk stuffed with papers from which he drew one forth. At Herbeck's first glance he recog- nized Schubert's handwriting. Written on the cover was 'Symphonie in H-moll.' It was the sought-after work. Quietly, Herbeck took the manuscript in his hands and attentively leafed through it."28 "That will be appropriate," said Herbeck and swiftly departed with the score, promising to have it copied at his own cost. Of course, this must be a simplified version of that day's events, which apparently also included the reaching of a written agreement con- cerning the publication of both the Symphony and the Overture, with proceeds from the sale to go to charity and to Schubert's surviving relatives. Anselm, as the scion of a well-to-do landowner, was no doubt sufficiently embar- rassed by Kreissle's rebuke and had no desire to be seen as making a profit from the "Unfin- ished" Symphony. On the back of Herbeck's visiting card, he wrote: "Visited me in the morn- ing of 1 May 1865 in the Strafierhof. I con- signed to him for performance: the original of Schubert's B-Minor Symphony, along with the overtures to Armella and Die Rduber and several Lieder. I empowered him to perform my C- Minor Overture for the benefit of poor relatives of Schubert."29

The premiere of the Symphony took place on 17 December 1865 at a concert of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. Herbeck kept his promise by opening the program with Huiittenbrenner's Overture in C Minor. From Herbeck the manuscript of the Symphony went to the collector Nikolaus Dumba, and it was bequeathed by him to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde.30 Spina published it in full score and parts, and in arrangements for piano and piano four-hands, in Vienna in early 1867 (see

28Herbeck, Johann Herbeck, Ein Lebensbild, p. 168. 29Felix Huttenbrenner, "Anselm Huttenbrenner und Schuberts H-moll Symphonie," p. 132. The orchestral works are the Overture to Huttenbrenner's comic opera Armella, oder die beiden Vizekonigennen (1824); the Overture to Schiller's drama Die Rauber (1857); and the Overture in C Minor (1837). 30Deutsch, Memoirs, p. 467. Herbeck died in 1877, Dumba in 1900, and the manuscript was entered on the "Geschenk- Buch" of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde on 7 March 1901. See Durr and Landon, Sinfonie in h-Moll, pp. II-III.

plate 1). Hiittenbrenner seems to have been content with the settlement: he made no attempt to retrieve the manuscript, although it allegedly was his private property. Later on, Herbeck prepared another contract, this one for publication of Schubert's Thirteen Variations in A Minor on a theme by Hiittenbrenner, D. 576, which he had also obtained during his visit to Graz in a manuscript copy made by Huittenbrenner in 1853.31

If Anselm was relieved to have concluded the arrangement, Josef Huttenbrenner at first found his brother's deal with Herbeck "most annoying"32 and later became enraged by it, complaining to his brother Andreas in 1867 that Anselm had permitted himself to be duped:

Herbeck has treated me and him [Anselm] deceit- fully. He collected the Overture, with transcribed parts, from me. The Schubert Symphony, too, I had for many years, until in the end Anselm took it to Graz and arranged it for piano duet in Radkersburg. This duet arrangement I lent to him [Herbeck]. Schubert gave me the Symphony, outside the Schottentor, for the Graz Diploma of Honour, and dedicated it to Anselm. Herbeck did not even give me a ticket for the rehearsals. .... It makes no difference about the Overture, although Herr von Kreissle said it was magnificent. The Wiener Zeitung and other papers praise it.-Even at the final re- hearsal they did not want to let me in. Why did Herbeck not want to let me in? Because I did not lend him two Schubert operas, which he saw when he visited me. Anselm was absolutely wrong to give him the Symphony. He should have forked it over only after they had given ten of his overtures and a symphony!33

31Johann Herbeck to Anselm Huttenbrenner, 9 October 1866, Deutsch, Memoirs, p. 440. 32Josef Huttenbrenner to his brother Andreas, 6 June 1865, Deutsch, Memoirs, p. 439. 33Josef Huttenbrenner to his brother Andreas, 11 February 1867, Deutsch, Memoirs, p. 442 (trans. corrected: the original presumably should read, "Es machte die Ouverture nichts," not "Er machte die Ouverture nicht," as given in Deutsch, Schubert: Die Erinnerungen seiner Freunde [Leipzig, 1967], p. 390). Josef failed to mention that Hanslick, in his review of the concert in the Neue freie Presse, ridiculed Anselm Huttenbrenner as one who had kept Schubert manuscripts "locked in a trunk" and taken the key "to bed" at night. Eduard Hanslick, Aus dem Concertsaal: Kritiken und Schilderungen (Vienna, 1870), p. 350.

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19TH CENTURY

MUSIC


Plate 1: B-Minor Symphony, published by Spina (1867). Courtesy of the Music Division, New York Public Library

for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

119

19TH From this, it is evident that Josef regretted that CENTURY

they had not continued to hold the Symphony hostage. Nor was this the only time that he acted against Schubert's interests: he also re- fused to provide Schubert's youthful operas, Des Teufels Lustschloss (1813-14) and act I of Claudine von Villa Bella ( 1815), for performance at the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde.34 Moreover, he failed to keep those manuscripts safe from destruction: Kreissle learned from him that the second and third acts of Claudine von Villa Bella were used "by his servants to light a fire" in 1848.35

In subsequent accounts, which were not free from serious inconsistencies, Josef continued to try to justify his and his brother's retention of the autograph score of the Symphony. In a letter of circa 1868 to an unidentified woman, he again stated that the score had been in his own rather than Anselm's possession,36 strongly implying that Schubert had intended him to have it.

I possessed the Symphony for many years and then Anselm arranged it as a pianoforte duet which I also lent to Herbeck.

Schubert gave it to me out of gratitude for the Diploma of Honour from the Graz Music Society, and dedicated it to the society and Anselm; I brought the diploma to Schubert. At that time the Society in Vienna and Graz did not like the C major Sym- phony. The B minor, which my brother and I place on a par with Beethoven, could not find an orchestra to accept it anywhere!37

34"Herbeck is hostile to me because I did not let him have two opera fragments by Schubert; he would have given them with orchestra in the Gesellschaft" (Josef Hutten- brenner to a young lady, ca. 1868, Deutsch, Memoirs, p. 193; trans. amended). 35Kreissle, Franz Schubert, p. 71, n. 1; see also Deutsch, Memoirs, p. 194. 36It is difficult to evaluate the truth of this statement: what is certain is that the score was in Anselm Huitten- brenner's hands by 4 April 1842, that being the date of his letter to Josef listing Schubert autographs in his possession (see p. 116 above). 37Josef Hiittenbrenner to a young lady, ca. 1868, Deutsch, Memoirs, p. 193. Deutsch finds the claim that orchestral performances were sought by the Hiittenbrenners, "an inappropriate expression, seeing that the two brothers had kept the B minor Symphony to themselves for forty years" (Deutsch, Memoirs, p. 194).

It is noteworthy that, unlike the Hiitten- brenners' present-day defenders, Josef always acknowledged that the Symphony was given in return for Schubert's election to the Styrian Musikverein; in attempting to explain the suppression of Schubert's masterpiece for forty years, he never went beyond asserting that the work was dedicated (wholly or jointly) to Anselm. As for that alleged dedication, there is no reference to Anselm Hfittenbrenner on the score, no accompanying dedicatory letter, no confirmation of such a dedication in contem- porary memoirs, and no letter of acknowledgment, thanks, or appreciation from the supposed dedicatee to the composer. And, deci- sively, Huittenbrenner's biographical notes and letters about Schubert referred to above are si- lent about the B-Minor Symphony, which, as music historians Max Friedlander and Ferdinand Bischoff perfectly understood, "could hardly have been the case if Schubert had dedicated that work to Huittenbrenner."38

In any event, the rationale for such a dedication rests on a false assumption-that it was Anselm Huittenbrenner who obtained the Di- ploma of Honor for Schubert-and on Josef's inaccurate statement that it was his brother who sent the honorary diploma to Schubert. But Anselm did not become President of the Musikverein until two years after Schubert's election. Moreover, Schubert's name was put

38Cited from Max Friedlander, Beitrdge zur Biographie Franz Schuberts (Berlin, 1887), p. 44n., in Ferdinand Bischoff, Chronik des steiermdrkischen Musikvereines (Graz, 1890), p. 71n. The plain fact is that the score bears no dedication of any kind. Schubert's normal practice was to dedicate works on their publication, although he often inscribed autographs or fair copies of smaller works to intimate friends. During their early years of association with Schubert, both Hiittenbrenner brothers received such dedications, to Anselm of the Deutscher Tanz in A; Major, D. 365, no. 2 ("Trauerwalzer"), and Josef of Die Forelle, D. 550 (third version), the Deutscher Tanz in C# Minor and Ecossaise in D; for Piano, D. 643, and an Overture in F for Piano Four-hands, D. 675. In this context, it is worth considering that of all Schubert's published dedications Deutsch calls attention to the absence of documentation in only two instances: he notes that Schubert's 1817 manuscript of his Thirteen Variations in A Minor on a theme by Anselm Huittenbrenner, D. 576, does not confirm the dedication to Anselm that is to be found on the latter's 1853 manuscript; and he remarks that "the same may be true" of the dedication to Josef of Erwartung, D. 159, second version. Deutsch, SDB, p. 949. In the latter instance, the manuscript is not extant.

120

in nomination by Johann Baptist Jenger, and the letter announcing his election was signed by three officers of the Verein, none of whom was Anselm Hiittenbrenner, for he, according to the official history of the Musikverein, "was at that time not yet even a member of the executive committee of the Verein and conse- quently had nothing to do, or was at most very indirectly involved, with Schubert's nomination as an honorary member."39

Maurice J. E. Brown's speculation that the Symphony was given to Anselm Hiittenbrenner "probably in payment for a debt or an obligation" (see p. 115) is without any factual founda- tion and goes far beyond the plain meaning of Josef Hiittenbrenner's statements. And, contrary to Brown's other assertions, the 1961 article by Felix Hiittenbrenner on which he re- lied for what he described as its "recent disclosure of documents from the Hiittenbrenner family archives" in fact contained no new documents revealing when, why, to whom, and for what purpose the manuscript was transmitted. Its defense of the Hiittenbrenners rests wholly on already published statements by Josef Hiittenbrenner and succeeds in demonstrating only that he made certain claims, not that they are true. In the absence of appropriate evidence, Felix Hiittenbrenner promoted a series of ques- tionable hypotheses, among them, that his fore- bears "vainly endeavored" to get Schubert to complete the work; that Schubert didn't have a public performance in mind and didn't care what happened to the Symphony; that Anselm Hiittenbrenner had no reason to pursue a performance in Graz because "it wouldn't serve much purpose to have a poor performance of the B-Minor Symphony"; that after 1839, when Hiittenbrenner resigned from the Musikverein, there was no opportunity for him to obtain a performance; that he ought not be blamed for suppressing a symphony to which he had a perfect property right, and, moreover, that Herbeck ought to be held responsible for the five years between 1860 and 1865 and Josef for "many" earlier years as well; and, not least,

39Bischoff, Chronik des steiermdrkischen Musikvereines, p. 71. Of course, this does not rule out the possibility that Anselm, as a leading member of the Verein, influenced the decision.

that the brothers are to be lauded for preserving the Symphony for posterity: "No one would have known of its existence had not the Hiitten- brenner brothers brought it to the world's attention."40 In sum, the responsibility for ne- glecting Schubert's Symphony is not to be assigned to Graz, the Musikverein, or the Hitten- brenners, but to the composer himself, who was willing to consign it to oblivion, and to the uncaring, uncomprehending world he inhabited.

In light of the documented circumstances, however, there is no reason to doubt that Schubert intended the Symphony in B Minor for the Musikverein rather than for Anselm Hiittenbrenner personally, and, furthermore, that he sent the autograph to Graz in hope of achieving what for him would have constituted a rare concert performance of one of his major orchestral works by a distinguished, proficient Musikverein.

III An examination of the concert programs of

the Styrian Musikverein from its founding in 1815 until 1829 sheds some light on Schubert's prospects of achieving his main goal. At the same time, the programs yield unexpected an- swers to the question of whether, when he forwarded it, Schubert considered the Sym- phony to be complete or incomplete.41

40For the above quotations, see Felix Hfittenbrenner, "Anselm Hiittenbrenner und Schuberts H-moll Symphonie," pp. 128-29, 130, 131-32, 127-28. The author even neglects to quote Schubert's letter of acceptance to the Musikverein with its promise to send it a symphony in full score, relegating it to a glancing reference in a secondary source quoted in his n. 9 (p. 135). For an earlier article on the subject by Felix Hiittenbrenner, see "Zur Geschichte der H-moll-Symphonie," Sangerzeitung des Steirischen Sdngerbundes 8, no. 2 (February 1928), 31-32. 41The information in what follows is drawn primarily from Bischoff, Chronik des steiermirkischen Musikvereines and Erika Eisbacher, Das Grazer Konzertleben v. 1815 bis Mdrz 1839 (diss., Karl-Franzens Universitat Graz, 1956), supplemented by data in Deutsch, SDB and Franz Schubert: Dokumente, 1817-1830, ed. Till Gerrit Waidelich, vol. I (Tutzing, 1993). The statistics are subject to some variance because some programs have not survived; allowance must also be made for incomplete or ambiguous listings, insufficiently described compositions, and disagreements between the sources. See also E. Krempel, Anfdnge der Grazer Konzertgeschichte (diss., Karl-Franzens Universitat Graz, 1950); and Bischoff, "Beethoven und die Grazer musikalischen Kreise," in Beethovenjahrbuch, ed. Theodor von Frimmel (Munich, 1908), I, 6-27.

121


Each year the Society offered a wide variety of public musical events, the most important of which were the "Musikalische Akademien des Musikvereins," these being "grand concerts" for charitable purposes, which were often, though not exclusively, scheduled for the Easter and Christmas seasons. There were also frequent "Gesellschaftsconcerten" offered mainly in summertime, regular concerts by pupils of the Society's music conservatory, concert presentations of full operas, and occasional performances of oratorios or other major choral works. If to these are added memorial services for deceased members and performances of sa- cred music at the annual St. Cecilia festival celebrations, we have the framework of an ex- traordinarily active musical life, wholly apart from the numerous Akademien by touring virtuosos and composers as well as music performed before and between the acts at the Schauspielhaus.

Excluding Musikverein conservatory concerts for its pupils and concerts at which members of the Musikverein served as supporting musicians, sixty-nine Musikverein events are recorded for the years 1815-29, for an average of just over 4.5 per year, and a large percentage of the programs survive or can be partially re- constructed from reviews. About 395 separate performances of works by ninety-three different composers made up the concert programs during these years. A tally indicates that the composers most frequently performed were Beethoven (50 separate performances), Rossini (38), Mozart (32), Haydn (16), Cherubini (17), Spontini (13), Mehul (10), Hummel (10), Meyerbeer (10), Weber (10) Mercadante (8), Schubert (7), Pixis (7), Boieldieu (6), Moscheles (6), Nicolini (6), and Paer (6).42

The grand concerts were typical nineteenth- century gala entertainments, featuring a pot- pourri of hit numbers from popular operas by such composers as Boieldieu, Rossini, Spontini, Pavesi, Mehul, Mercadante, and Meyerbeer; overtures by Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Rossini,

42A statistical tally of most frequently performed composers at all events in Graz between 1815 and 1838 shows a total of 1384 works, among them Rossini (140), Beethoven (87), Mozart (74), Hummel (31), and Haydn (19). Eisbacher, Das Grazer Konzertleben v. 1815 bis Mirz 1839, p. 86.

Cherubini, Spohr, and Spontini; movements of concertos and virtuoso showpieces for solo instruments by various lesser composers; and oc- casionally interspersed Lieder, vocal quartets, choral numbers, and declamations. Although the main drawing cards were operatic arias, ensembles, and choruses, these constituting about a fourth of the programs, opera and concert overtures for orchestra were by far the most popular individual genre, with 119 on the programs. Thus, there was no dearth of orchestral music. Symphonies, however, were rarely heard: after 1815, Haydn, Mozart, Fesca, Huiittenbrenner, and Eduard Lannoy were each represented at Musikverein concerts only by individual symphonic movements; and complete symphonies-possibly one each by Haydn, Schoberlechner, and Mozart-were heard only at Akademien of visiting virtuosos or between acts at the Schauspielhaus (see Table 1).

The sole, great exception was Beethoven, whose devoted admirers-led by Joseph Varena, a founding member of the Musikverein, and the noted professor and author Julius Franz Schneller-pursued the tradition in Graz of complete performances of Beethoven symphonies, which had been inaugurated in 1805 with the Second Symphony, followed by the Eroica and the Pastoral Symphonies in 1809, and the Pastoral and the Fifth in 1811 and 1813 respectively. The tradition was continued by the Musikverein with an unspecified symphony in 1815, the Seventh Symphony in 1816, the Eighth in 1818, the Second in 1821, and both the Pastoral and Fifth Symphonies (the latter not quite complete) in 1824 (see Table 2). In addition, individual movements from his symphonies were programmed with some fre- quency. (Wellingtons Sieg was also a great fa- vorite, with five complete performances-three in 1816, and one each in 1817 and 1819, along with several separate performances of the Siegessymphonie.) There was, however, a fall- ing off in performances of Beethoven symphonies after 1819, and the absence of any complete symphonies by him on the programs for more than fifteen years after 1824 suggests that the appetite for them had diminished in Graz starting around the time that Schubert sent his Symphony there. And even the greatest piety toward Beethoven had its limits. When his

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19TH CENTURY

MUSIC

Table 1

Performances of Symphonies and Symphony Movements Graz 1815-30 (Excluding Beethoven)

DATE COMPOSER DETAILS

5 July 1815 Haydn "Symphonie von Haydn" at Akademie for actor Heinrich Herbst.

29 December 1815 Schoberlechner "einen neuen Symphonie" at Akademie for Franz Schoberlechner.

13 January 1816 Beethoven and Mozart "einer gehaltvollen Symphonie von Beethoven und Mozart." Between acts of a play at the Schauspielhaus.

30 May 1816 Haydn Allegro and Andante from Symphony in D ("Schwanengesang"). At Morgenconcert des Musikvereins.

2 December 1816 Mozart "eine groge Symphonie von Mozart." Between acts of a play at the Schauspielhaus.

25 December 1816 Not identified "Ein Theil einer Simphonie" at Akademie for clarinetist Weissgarber.

7 August 1818 Fesca Introduction and Allegro from Symphony. At Akademie des Musikvereins.

10 October 1818 Pucitta "Symphony." Between the acts of a play at the Schauspielhaus.

14 October 1818 Mozart "Ein Stuck einer Sinfonie von Mozart." At Akademie for Mad. Plomer. At Schauspielhaus.

25 December 1818 Feska Akademie des Musikvereins. An overture or first movement.

8 September 1819 Hiittenbrenner "Sinfonie." Akademie des Musikvereins. An overture.

5 July 1820 Mozart First movement of Symphony in ES. At Akademie for Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart.

8 September 1822 Lannoy Movement from C-Major Symphony. Akademie des Musikvereins.

27 September 1822 Legnani "Symphonie mit orchester-Begleitung" opening each half of Akademie for guitar virtuoso Legnani.

25 December 1822 Mozart "erster Satz der grofien" Symphony in D. Akademie des Musikvereins.

1823-30 none

Sources for Tables 1-3: Schubert: A Documentary Biography, ed. Otto Erich Deutsch, trans. Eric Blom (London, 1946); Franz Schubert: Dokumente 1817-1830, ed. Till Gerrit Waidelich, vol. I (Tutzing, 1993); Erika Eisbacher, Das Grazer Konzertleben v. 1815 bis Marz 1839 (diss., Karl-Franzens Universitat in Graz, 1956); Ferdinand Bischoff, Chronik des steiermirkischen Musikvereines (Graz, 1890); Bischoff, "Beethoven und die Grazer musikalischen Kreise, " in Beethovenjahrbuch, ed. Theodor von Frimmel (Munich, 1908), I, 6-27; 0. E. Deutsch, Beethovens Beziehungen zu Graz (Graz, 1907), esp. pp. 4-11.

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19TH Table 2 CENTURY

MUSIC Performances of Beethoven Symphonies in Graz, 1805-39

YEAR DATE SYMPHONY DETAILS

19 April

1809 17 February

15 December

25 July

6 June

6 June

13 January

14 April (Easter evening) 24 April

4 July

12 December

25 December

7 February

5 June

25 December

1818 22 March (Easter Sunday) 8 June

Symphony (not specified; probably Second Symphony in D)

Symphony (not specified; probably Eroica Symphony in ES)

Symphony (not specified; probably Pastoral Symphony in F)

Pastoral Symphony in F

Symphony (not specified; probably the Fifth in C minor)

Symphony (not specified)

Movement of a symphony (not specified)

Wellingtons Sieg

Wellingtons Sieg Pastoral Symphony in F, excerpts from

First Symphony in C

Seventh Symphony in A Wellingtons Sieg

Second Symphony in D

Wellingtons Sieg. Allegro, probably from the Seventh Symphony in A

Symphony (probably only in part) Eighth Symphony in F, perhaps omitting finale.

Eighth Symphony: Tempo di Menuetto

"Eine neue Simphonie von Beethoven" at fourth in first series of Liebhaber Concerts at standische Redoutensaal.

A "grogfe Sinfonie von Beethoven" at second in fourth series of Liebhaber Concerts. Deutsch believes the Eroica Symphony had been previously performed at Graz.

A "grogfe Sinfonie von Beethoven" at seventh in fourth series of Liebhaber Concerts. The Pastoral Symphony had been published in May 1809.

Benefit Akademie in Wurmbrand-Garten in honor of Prof. Julius Franz Schneller, produced by Joseph Varena.

Benefit Akademie produced by Varena.

Akademie des Musikvereins. At the Schauspielhaus.

Between acts of a drama at the Schauspielhaus.

Akademie des Musikvereins. At the Schauspielhaus.

Akademie des Musikvereins.

Morgenconcert des Musikvereins.

Before performance of a drama at the Schauspielhaus. Akademie des Musikvereins.

Before performance of a drama at the Schauspielhaus. Akademie des Musikvereins.



Akademie for Marie Therese Sessi.

1805

1811

1813

1815

1816

1817

124

Table 2 (cont.)

Performances of Beethoven Symphonies in Graz, 1805-39

YEAR DATE SYMPHONY DETAILS

1818 14 October Andante from "einer grofIen Sinfonie" Akademie for Catharina Hyde Plomer.

25 December Wellingtons Sieg: Siegessymphonie Akademie des Musikvereins.

1819 12 November Wellingtons Sieg Akademie des Musikvereins.

1821 February Second Symphony in D Akademie des Musikvereins.

1824 4 July 3 movements from the Fifth Symphony Gesellschaftsakademie des in C Minor Musikvereins.

13 August Pastoral Symphony in F Morgenconcert des (divided in three parts as "Erster Satz," Musikvereins. "Zweyter" und "Letztes Stuick")

8 September Fifth Symphony in C Minor: finale Akademie des Musikvereins.

24 December Fifth Symphony in C Minor: finale Akademie des Musikvereins.

1825 25 December Wellingtons Sieg: Siegessymphonie Akademie des Musikvereins.

1826 Unknown movement from Seventh Symphony Musikverein event.

1827 Unknown Fifth Symphony in C Minor: finale Musikverein event.

1828-30 Unknown Eighth Symphony in F: Musikverein event. Allegro vivace e con brio and Tempo di Menuetto

1831 8 September Wellingtons Sieg Akademie des Musikvereins.

1832-39 None

"Consecration of the House" Overture, op. 115, was performed at the Society's concert on 19 March 1826, it was viewed as too difficult, the reviewer in the Grazer Zeitung commenting: "It would be better appreciated if it were performed as the high point of a classical oratorio rather than in a concert where, nowadays, one expects more easily comprehensible ingre- dients."43

43Waidelich, Franz Schubert: Dokumente, p. 276. The original reads: "Sie wuirde besser an der Spitze eines classischen Oratoriums, als eines Concertes stehen, wo man heutiges Tages leichter fafliche Bestandtheile erwartet." The concert took place on 19 March (not 19 April), and the review is dated 29 April (not 26 April); the erroneous dates are in Deutsch, SDB, p. 522. Beethoven's domination of symphony performances in Vienna was quite similar: of symphonies performed at the first one hundred concerts of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde between

One can well imagine, then, that the direc- tors of the Styrian Musikverein would not have been overly enthusiastic at a prospect of performing Schubert's Symphony. They would have had little desire to subject their audience of patrons and substantial citizens to a symphony consisting of a lugubrious opening movement followed by a melancholy second movement. By the same token, knowing about the conventional makeup of the Musikverein programs, Schubert could not have been altogether sanguine about his prospects of achieving a

1815 and 1840, Beethoven led with thirty-five, followed by Mozart (twenty), Krommer (five), Haydn (four), Lachner (three), and a handful of others with one or two. See Eduard Hanslick, Geschichte des Concertwesens in Wien (Vienna, 1869), p. 292.

125


19TH performance. And that may explain why he CENTURY delayed for so long in sending the symphony to

Graz: it wasn't necessarily because he was re- miss, as his own family suspected,44 but because he calculated that the work had only the slimmest chance of being performed.

Schubert had good reason for that calcula- tion, for his influential friends in Graz had not managed to achieve any serious representation for his works on the programs of the Musikverein. Although he had been off to an auspicious start in Graz with a performance of one of his orchestral overtures (probably the E Minor, D. 648) in 1820, this was not under Musikverein auspices but at an Akademie for Viennese violinist Eduard Jaell, who was a stal- wart proponent of Schubert's music, responsible in 1818 for the first public performance of any of his works, in 1819 for the first public performance of any of his Lieder, and, with Jaell's Graz Akademie, for the first performance of any of his works outside Vienna. Thereafter, Schubert appeared on Graz programs exclusively as a composer of small-scale vocal music. Be- tween 1820 and 1828 approximately nine of his vocal quartets and four Lieder were performed there, of which three vocal quartets and three Lieder were at Musikverein Akademien (see Table 3). And if one discounts the three works performed on 8 September 1827 during Schubert's visit, the Musikverein performances shrink to a total of three Lieder and vocal quartets during Schubert's lifetime: one each in 1822, 1825, and 1826; to this, after his death, can be added only one for 1829. His name was altogether absent from the Musikverein's programs in 1820, 1821, 1823, 1824, and 1828. It was a paltry harvest for a major composer, in- dicative of his limited status in Graz, despite his honorary diploma.

During the last ten years of Anselm Hiitten- brenner's tenure as President of the Musik-

44In a letter of 14 August 1824, Schubert's father and stepmother asked, "How do you stand about your honorary distinctions by diploma from the Styrian and Linz Musical Societies?" and continued with a paternal remonstrance: "If, contrary to all expectation, you should not yet have done so, let me urge you most earnestly to thank them in a worthy manner. These noble societies show you exceptional love and respect, which may be very important for you" (Deutsch, SDB, p. 368).

verein, the situation worsened, with only two of Schubert's compositions performed-one each in 1835 and 1836-and these at secondary concerts without orchestra. Had it not been for the presentation of nine Lieder and vocal quartets at concerts by the visiting Friedrich Beer between 1833 and 1835, Schubert's music would have been almost wholly unrepresented in Graz in the 1830s. It is difficult to say why Htittenbrenner did virtually nothing to promote his friend's music. It certainly gives one pause to consider that, despite his protestations of devotion to Schubert, he had reservations about departures from older musical traditions: indeed, in an unguarded remark, which he instantly modified, he once wrote, "The world of music should have stopped with Gluck."45 The pattern of neglect was firmly established, so that even in later decades Schubert was infrequently performed in Graz: his C-Major Symphony was not played until 1862, almost a quarter century after its rediscovery, and the "Unfinished" Symphony not until 1871, six years after its Vienna premiere.

Keenly aware that he was stereotyped as a Lieder composer, Schubert surely was also aware of the remarkable Graz tradition of Beethoven symphony performances and yearned for that kind of recognition. When he delivered his "symphony in full score" to the Musikverein, he was not just settling an obligation but was asking for a hearing equal to that previously afforded only to Beethoven. If so, here may be a dramatic sign of Schubert's ambitious and ada- mant character, so different from the hapless Schubert of nostalgic legend. He could readily have sent a more ingratiating work, one with a better chance of being acceptable to audiences in Graz, such as several recently written opera overtures or the incidental music to Rosamunde (produced 20 December 1823). But to a composer who aspired to be a symphonist, for whom it was galling to be regarded only as a Lieder

45Anselm Huttenbrenner to Ferdinand Luib, 7 March 1858, Deutsch, Memoirs, p. 70. Huttenbrenner tried to soften this peremptory statement, continuing: "But 'sunt certi denique fines' cannot be applied to music; and it would have been a thousand pities if we were never to have heard anything by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Cherubini."

126

Table 3

Schubert Performances in Graz, 1820-30

YEAR DATE WORK DETAILS

1820 7 April

1822 8 September

13 September

18 October

1823 prior to 7 June

1825 2 June

1826 19 March

1827 25 March

8 September

1828 27 August

1829 16 February

18 June

A "New Overture" (probably Overture in E minor, D. 648) Das D6rfchen, D. 598, vocal quartet

Die Nachtigall, D. 724, vocal quartet Erlk6nig, D. 328

Das D6rfchen, D. 598, vocal quartet

Male vocal quartets, unspecified

Der ziirnenden Diana, D. 707

Der Wanderer, D. 489 or D. 649

Two vocal quartets, unidentified, but presumably Das D6rfchen, D. 598, and Die Nachtigall, D. 724

Normans Gesang, D. 846 Gott in der Natur, D. 757, vocal quartet Geist der Liebe, D. 747, vocal quartet

Lied, unspecified

Male vocal quartet, title and composer unspecified

Vocal quartet, unspecified

Akademie for Eduard Jaell in the Redoutensaal.

Akademie des Musikvereins, in the Redoutensaal.

Vocal Recital by Demoiselle Therese Sessi, with Anselm Huittenbrenner, piano.

Akademie for J. B. Amerbacher, at the Schauspielhaus.

Evidently private performances. See Grazer Zeitung for 7 June 1823, cit. Waidelich, Schubert Dokumente, I, 159-60.

Akademie des Musikvereins in Landhaussaal.

Akademie des Musikvereins in the Rittersaal. Performed by Jakob Wilhelm Rauscher with Anselm Huttenbrenner, piano.

Akademie by the Pupils of the Prague Conservatory, at the Rittersaal.

Akademie des Musikvereins at the Schauspielhaus. Schubert at the piano.

Akademie for flutist Franz Zierer. Sung by Friedrich Schmezer, tenor.

Akademie for basset hornist Franz Schalk at Schauspielhaus.

Akademie des Musikvereins at Schauspielhaus.

composer, such alternatives were evidently un- acceptable. Instead, heartened by the experience of Beethoven, the intensity of his own desire, and his hope for acknowledgment at least by a minority of connoisseurs within the Society, he chose to play for high stakes, willing to risk almost certain rejection.

This new look at the Styrian Musikverein's

concert programs also now permits reconsider- ing the question that has troubled several scholars, whether Schubert would have sent a fragmentary work for performance.46 It has, however, become evident that Schubert had no rea-

46See nn. 13 and 14.

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son not to send two individual symphonic movements, or a two-movement symphony, to the Musikverein. A performance by the Musik- verein of either or both of the movements was the best he could hope for. There was no need to furnish a scherzo or a finale because there was not even a remote possibility that these would be scheduled. In brief, inasmuch as the Musikverein did not perform "complete" symphonies other than those of Beethoven, the belief that Schubert would not have presented an "unfinished" or a two-movement symphony to the Musikverein for performance falls away. Einstein's and Deutsch's perplexity has been found to rise from a false premise.

On the other hand, it can also no longer be asserted that because a rational Schubert would not have sent an unfinished work to the Musikverein, the work was, to his mind, already complete as it stood. What seemed to be a promising avenue for demonstrating that the work was not unfinished is now closed.

In the end, then, after examining the historical record, we are left with an open question. No assumption about Schubert's ultimate intentions is safe, except one, that we cannot be certain what they might have been. We do know that they had already undergone two major shifts: he considered the Symphony as a work in progress when he drafted the scherzo in 1822; and when he sent it to Graz later on, he had probably decided against finishing it, at least for the time being. But further shifts in his intentions were still possible. At every moment of Schubert's life after October 1822, this Sym- phony had the potentiality to become a different work from the one that exists. Given an appropriate performance opportunity, Schubert could have let it stand in two movements, or recast those movements, or finished the sketched scherzo and composed a finale, or written a new third movement, either as a minuet/ scherzo or as a finale. Indeed, had the Musik- verein (or any other orchestra) expressed interest in performing the work as a four-movement cycle, Schubert might well have written closing movements. Or he could have arranged the present music for a different combination of instruments, or used the Symphony's materi- als in other compositions. A host of unrealized possibilities were latent in those two move-

ments; nothing was foreclosed until the moment of Schubert's death. It may be best to speak, not of an unfinished work, but of an unpredictable, unfinished process, one whose outcome could be determined only by the exer- cise of Schubert's creative will, by his unpredictable decision to continue or to leave off.

IV The nineteenth century heard.Schubert's B-

Minor Symphony as unfinished not simply because it is in two movements (there are many works called symphonies in one or two movements) but because it was labeled "unfinished" at the very outset-by the Hiittenbrenners in their first descriptions of the work; by the authors of the first published references; by the early biographers and commentators. At its premiere, the Symphony was listed as "Unvollendete" ("Unfinished") and fitted out with a finale from an earlier Schubert symphony.47 And we may hazard that it was so designated because it "ended" with an Andante, an idea not easily reconcilable with ordinary conceptions of the Classical symphony. When Beethoven himself sent his two-movement Piano Sonata in C Minor, op. 111, to the press in 1822, his Paris publisher Maurice Schlesinger was worried that the finale might be missing: "I take the liberty, prior to my sending it to be engraved, to obediently ask you whether this work is written only as 1 Maestoso and 1 Andante, or whether perhaps the Allegro was accidentally forgotten by the Copyist."148

Although it has no authority in Schubert, the title "Unfinished" is inextricably part of the Symphony, from which it can never be disentangled, any more than one can remove the posthumous title "Moonlight" from Beethoven's sonata, which acquired its nick- name by an accident of publishing history. And the title has shaped our perception of the Sym-

47The Symphony No. 3 in D, D. 200, according to Durr and Landon, Sinfonie in h-Moll, p. II. The first performance of the two movements by themselves was presented by Herbeck in a Gesellschaft concert of 4 November 1866. C. F. Pohl, Die Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde . .. und ihr Conservatorium (Vienna, 1871), p. 86. 48Maurice Schlesinger to Beethoven, 3 July 1822, Ludwig van Beethoven: Briefwechsel Gesamtausgabe, ed. Sieghard Brandenburg (Munich, 1997), IV, 506 (no. 1476).

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phony: we hear it as an unfinished work, as an extended fragment, like the Sonata in C ("Reliquie"), D. 840, the String Quartet in C Minor ("Quartett-Satz"), D. 703, or the Sym- phony in E, D. 729. This perception dictates the nature of the questions that we pose to the work and that the work poses to us. An "Un- finished" Symphony opens up the connections between Schubert and that aspect of the Ro- manticist aesthetic that valorizes ruins, fragments, longing, sudden death, and every other idea of incompletion; it is emblematic of an inability to achieve conventional patterns of archetypal transcendence-those bearing on homecoming, triumph, closure, happy ending. Contemplating an unfinished masterpiece, some have imagined in Schubert an indiffer- ence to immortality, thinking of the supreme irony of composing such a work and then per- mitting it to languish in obscurity, incomplete, unheard, unfulfilled. The "Unfinished" Sym- phony readily turns into a metaphor for Schubert's very existence-his bachelorhood, his disease, his early death, his brief, "unfinished" life. The composer Hugo Wolf wrote: "The B Minor Symphony, a true reflection of the artistic individuality of its creator, was unfortunately left a fragment. So it compares in its form with the external existence of the master, who in the flower of his life, at the height of his creative powers, was snatched away by Death. Schubert lived only half a lifetime, as a man and also as an artist."49 The notion of a Schubert unable to complete this supreme work or even to recognize his own greatness meshed perfectly with the conventional image of him as tempest-tossed, helpless, incapable of action: the genius as a doomed schlemiel. The "Unfin- ished" Symphony is seen as embodying a composer's sense of futility, his fear of achievement, his supposed inability to compete with a more vital, manly Beethoven, his perceived inability to "bring to the finale a sense of con- summation and catharsis," in biographer John Reed's formulation.50 The "Unfinished" Sym- phony is central to the tenacious Biedermeier

49Hugo Wolf, in the Wiener Salonblatt, cited in Frank Walker, Hugo Wolf: A Biography (New York, 1952), p. 150. 50Reed, Schubert, p. 105.

myth of an "unfinished" Schubert, which sees him as marginalized, victimized, and misun- derstood, a composer who created automati- cally or in a somnambulistic trance, who inevi- tably succumbed to melancholia and despair.

Critics have had well over a century to probe these kinds of implications about Schubert's Symphony as an intentionally unfinished work. Our examination of the documentary record may now authorize us to hear it in different ways, including as a complete or potentially complete work, with all that such a way of hearing it may imply about issues of closure in art and in life. If we perceive the Symphony as unfinished, we ask, "What kind of continuation and finale would be appropriate to it? What kind of ending could it have?" If, on the other hand, we perceive it as finished, we ask a different question: "What kind of finale has Schubert already written?"

With the knotty issue of Schubert's intentions, whether provisional or ultimate, set aside, the coda of the Andante con moto of the "Unfinished" Symphony conveys the deep impression of closure that defines the sense of an ending: it has achieved a state of repose that calls for nothing beyond silence and inner reflection. It is distinctly an ending, if by that we mean that it propounds a statement that does not necessarily require further discourse. Nothing in it intrinsically demands a continuation or the breaking of its well-earned silence. And this has not been overlooked by several eminent commentators, who have felt a sense of structural coherence or sufficiency in Schubert's two movements and argued for the wholeness of the symphony in its present form, although without trying to ground their observations in the documentary evidence. For example, Walter Dahms believed that Schubert "put aside his pen" in the midst of the trio of the scherzo precisely because the work "seemed to its creator himself, sufficiently finished for him to dispense with the completion of the usual plan of a symphony."'5 Similarly, Herbert Peyser emphasized the "unequivocal and infinitely assuaging completeness" that Schubert

"Walter Dahms, Schubert (6th-9th edn., Berlin, 1918), p. 130.

129


had achieved, making further movements irrel- evant; he saw the scherzo as "a superfluity ... an egregious interloper, utterly alien, infinitely remote."52 The insufficiently elaborated issue in such observations is whether we ought to view the work from an aesthetic of the fragmentary or from an aesthetic of coherence. The two positions are perhaps most clearly represented by Joseph Muiller-Blattau, who saw the Symphony as a "fragment" or "torso," which its "own creator . . . counted as a valid work of art in itself, "53 and by Paul Henry Lang, who asserted that Schubert-like Beethoven in his two-movement sonatas-was satisfied with two movements because "the mood was com- pletely exhausted" and who suggested "it is high time that its name be changed," for, "far from regarding it as a magnificent torso, we should treasure the B minor symphony as a consummate work of art, free from all formalistic restrictions."54 Most recently, Susan McClary has interpreted the symphony as a refusal of a narrowly drawn "heroic narrative," observing that "Schubert concludes with a gentle yet firm refusal to submit to narrative conventions that would have achieved closure only at the expense of his integrity."55

52Herbert F. Peyser, "The Epic of the 'Unfinished'," Musical Quarterly 14 (1928), 659-60. "Its very incompleteness may be due to Schubert's recognition of its tragic sense, to his unwillingness to mitigate the thrust and the deep appeasement thereof" (p. 644). 53Joseph Muller-Blattau, "Schuberts 'Unvollendete' und das Problem des Fragmentarischen in der Musik," in his Von der Vielfalt der Musik: Musikgeschichte, Musikerziehung, Musikpflege (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1966), pp. 285-301 (at p. 288). See also Hansgeorg Maier, "Anmerkungen zum Wesen des Fragments," Die Literatur 38 (1935-36), 555- 57, cited by Muller-Blattau, p. 288, n.3. 54Paul Henry Lang, Music in Western Civilization (New York, 1941), p. 783. 55Susan McClary, "Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert's Music," in Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology, ed. Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas (New York, 1994), pp. 224, 227. Finally, Arnold Schering, in an outlandish reading that ignores the import of the sketches, proposed that the Symphony was written from the start in two movements as a musical realization of Schubert's "Mein Traum," his brief prose narrative dating from earlier in 1822. The argument rests shakily on the propinquity of the two works and on Schering's mistaken reading of "Mein Traum" as being, like the Symphony, in two sections. See Arnold Schering, Franz Schuberts Symphonie in h-moll und ihr Geheimnis, Kleine deutsche Musikbiicherei, vol. 1 (Wuirzburg-Aumuihle, 1939), pp. 14-16.

Nevertheless, such perceptions have run up against substantive objections. It has been argued that "had Schubert intended to write a two-movement symphony he would surely have cast the second movement in either B minor or B major."56 But it may be countered that the "Unfinished" Symphony is an anomalous work to begin with, raising highly particular issues that cannot be settled by an appeal to the absence of precedent. A symphony in B minor is already, as John Reed observed, "a novel con- cept in itself," without serious precedent in the mature symphonies of Schubert's main prede- cessors.57 And the choice of what appears to be the subdominant in the major mode for the Andante con moto is also highly unusual. Thus, we ought not to rule out the possibility that a symphony characterized by anomalies of key, tempo, rhetoric, and texture might be equally anomalous in harmonic structure. And if this is so, we might want to entertain the possibility that a tonal trajectory that proceeds from B minor to E major may be construed in a different way than the title page suggests, as a move from an initiating unstable dominant minor to an E-major tonic, perhaps offering a clue to why the Andante con moto provides so pro- found an impression of closure.

To pursue this idea for a moment, the score sketches show that Schubert initially proposed to end the Allegro moderato with a wide-sweep- ing arpeggiated B-minor passage in contrary motion that eventuates in an expected B-minor chord, which then is surprisingly transformed into a B-major chord, pianissimo, sustained for three measures up to the final fermata (ex. 1 ).58 It is a tierce de Picardie, rare enough in Schubert's time, which almost invariably conveys a heightened sense of finality, but which here tends to create the effect of an attacca, reinforcing the implication of an overarching trajectory toward an E-major tonic. The inflec- tion of the D# in the closing measures of the

56Mosco Carner, "The Orchestral Music," in The Music of Schubert, ed. Gerald Abraham (New York, 1947), p. 63. 57Reed, Schubert, pp. 104-05. 58The B-major ending in the score sketches was first discussed in Maurice J. E. Brown, Essays on Schubert (London, 1966), p. 10.

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328

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9:# : r #1 L 1. 1- l ii^i -^ i7 i 1 - 2 Eft i p pPP

Example 1: B-Minor Symphony, piano sketches, mm. 328-50.

score sketch unseats B minor as a tonic, revealing a kind of dominant that, in Richard Kramer's formulation, "simultaneously makes explicit and heals the connection between the movements."59 Perhaps this idea was not subtle enough to convey Schubert's drive to establish a coherent linkage between these movements; or he may have preferred not to settle for a premature or preemptive resolution of the Symphony's long-range instability; or, perhaps, the arrival of B major-and the potential for a permanent displacement of B minor-had already been sufficiently established at the cli- max of the recapitulation (mm. 303-21). What- ever the reasons, the intended shift to the major mode at the close was canceled, and the scored movement ended swiftly with contend- ing claims to displace the precarious hegemony of B minor still fully in play. The "arrival" in E major discloses and endorses a narrative structure that had originated with an uncanny twist- ing melody in the depths of the orchestra and now has found its way into the light. The lis- tener retrospectively feels the sensation of release that comes with the resolution of so mo- mentous an instability.

In the main, it seems fair to say, the Sym- phony has been stamped as an unconsummated work because it doesn't have a conventional Classical era ending, such as those in which Haydn expressed an Olympian, mirthful cel-

59Personal communication.

ebration of the ways of God and man, or those rondos in which Mozart rejoiced in the emergence from the reflectivity and inwardness he had plumbed in his Andantes and Adagios, or those representations of resolute, irresistible motion toward an exalted goal whose archetypal example is the finale of the "Jupiter" Symphony. And especially it is not like Beethoven's powerful, overwhelmingly insis- tent affirmations in some famous works of his middle years, which are called the exemplars of his "heroic" style because they seem to em- body his attempt to translate into music ideas and narratives of suffering, struggle, resistance, and victory. It may be that Schubert's "Unfin- ished" Symphony unpremeditatedly lays bare the exhaustion-or even the possible irrel- evance-of the traditional four-movement symphonic layout for him and others of his genera- tion. The affirmative, heaven-storming finale, which reached its most characteristic formula- tions in the instrumental music of Beethoven's middle period, seems to have taken on an arbi- trary character, lost its internal conviction. Against the backdrop of an uneasy existence in the post-Napoleonic age, it became increasingly difficult for a Viennese Romantic dissident to bear witness to great social undertakings; the outermost limits of affirmation seemed to re- side in the survival of individual conscience and refined sensibility. Beethoven's own failure to pursue another symphony to completion for more than a decade after 1812 perhaps implies that he himself had no clear idea of how

131


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to extend the tradition; and his Ode to Joy may be evidence of his conclusion that a radical turn was necessary, including a conversion of the Classical model into mythopoesis and Gesamtkunstwerk. But Beethoven's late quartets and Schubert's late chamber music and C- Major Symphony also show that neither composer was ready to dispense with the affirmative finale, and that there was no shortage of imaginative ideas for conclusions, arrivals, and

every variety of leave-takings, even within the confines of the Classical layout.

The miscarriage of Schubert's scherzo may have given him an unanticipated and unplanned opening toward a unique conception of the Sym- phony, one that condensed the array of con- trasting affects usually found in a full symphonic cycle into the span of two lengthy movements. The most striking example of this is in the Andante con moto, which erupts into mo-

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I

i

I

ments of triumphant exaltation like those usually associated with the Beethovenian symphonic finale (ex. 2).60

The "Unfinished" Symphony thereby appears to place on the agenda a potential reconfiguration in symphonic structures of the expected order of aesthetic events. The affects of inwardness, contemplation, meditation, and loss associated with Andante movements retain their centrality, as do touches of pastoral and aristocratic nostalgia usually located in minuets or scherzos. Far from omitting ideas of conflict and transcendence, however, Schubert has retained them in all their fury, but sum- moned them to materialize in an unexpected temporal sequence, functioning as transitional stages rather than as imperative emblems of permanent achievement.

We know that art's affirmative endings, in their infinite variety, and with their insistence

60Einstein observed that "Beethoven's mighty orchestral crescendi always culminate in correspondingly mighty outbursts. With Schubert these outbursts are shorter, as it were more dangerous, and the contrasts are sharper and more clear-cut. Beethoven is full of pathos; Schubert possessed of a daemon" (Einstein, Schubert, p. 203).

on the renewability of human experience, their faith in resurrection and salvation, represent singular images of hope or of possibility, rather than of the uncertain order of things in life, where tragic and transcendent moments suc- ceed one another in no particular fixed sequence. Art is already a reconfiguration of the order of things, a rearrangement of life. In the "Unfin- ished" Symphony, Schubert rearranges the customary rearrangement, not ruling out resurrection but choosing for the time being to settle for Faust's "Tarry awhile, thou art so fair," rather than to insist on Fidelio's trumpet call. Or, perhaps, it may simply be that he elected to close a chapter rather than a book.

Alternatives like these may now be set along- side-though they cannot displace-the traditional readings of the "Unfinished" Symphony. Our perception of the structure of the Sym- phony hinges on whether or not we choose to view it as a complete work. This does not signify that we are at an impasse, with its implication of limited possibilities. Rather, by a further exploration of what is assuredly an open question, we may eventually be able to broaden the perspectives within which Schubert's a^ Symphony-and his life-can be viewed. Na-W.

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on the subject of schubert's "unfinished" symphony: "was bedeutet die...

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