I bought my favorite cassette tape in the summer of ‘85. I was a music education major working at a summer camp. I could only afford to buy tapes occasionally, and then only the budget brand tapes.
Side “A” of this tape was Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, op. 67 – the first symphony I ever loved. Side “B” was Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759 “Unfinished” – the second symphony I ever loved.
It sounds like a cliché, but I literally wore out that tape. My girlfriend that summer and I would listen to it at night while lying on a trampoline under the stars. We knew the boombox batteries were dying when the music became sluggish and modulated to B-flat minor.
Such wonderful memories. Like the nighttime sky we gazed at, it was heavenly to be listening to music you loved with a person you loved. We were both studying to be teachers and would talk for hours about the teaching profession while we listened. And of course, we knew everything about teaching back then. Ahem…Eventually, the tape wore out and broke up, and sadly, so did we. Ah, the beauty of metaphor.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve always felt such a personal connection to Schubert’s “Unfinished.” There’s something beautiful about music that leaves us wondering what comes next. It has two magnificent movements – then silence. What happened?
Schubert began the work in 1822. The surviving manuscript contains the two fully orchestrated movements that we know, sketches for a third (a scherzo), but no finale.
Why did he stop? Perhaps he saw little prospect of ever getting it performed. Perhaps he couldn’t find a conclusion worthy of what he’d already written. One theory suggests that the B minor Entr’acte from his incidental music for Rosamunde might originally have been intended as the missing finale.
The curious thing is that those two movements feel remarkably complete, at least to me. The first is dramatic and restless. The second is lyrical and tender. Any incompleteness that I might feel is part of the experience for me. Could that have been intentional? That’s my theory based solely on personal speculation.
The next time we listen to Schubert’s “Unfinished” together on BTPM Classical, let’s remember to ask ourselves if we feel something is missing, or if Schubert gave us all that we need for a complete experience.
In the end, I hope the mystery of Schubert’s “Unfinished” is never solved. Some mysteries are worth keeping.
The BTPM Classical Blog is presented by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
