Skip to content
EntityQ651383· pop 32· linked from 161 articles

Symphony No. 8

Sign in to save

Also known as The Unfinished Symphony, Unfinished Symphony, Symphony No. 8 in B Minor, D. 759, "Unfinished"

symphony by Franz Schubert

Key facts

Other name
Unfinished Symphony
Key
B minor
Catalogue
D. 759
Movements
Two completed, fragments of two other movements
Scoring
Orchestra

via Wikipedia infobox

~20 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D 759 (sometimes renumbered as Symphony No. 7, in accordance with the revised Deutsch catalogue and the Neue Schubert-Ausgabe), commonly known as the Unfinished Symphony (German: Unvollendete), is a musical composition that Schubert started in 1822 but left with only two movements—though he lived for another six years. A scherzo, nearly completed in piano score but with only two pages orchestrated, also survives.

It has been theorized by some musicologists, including Brian Newbould, that Schubert may have sketched a finale that instead became the big B minor entr'acte from his incidental music to Rosamunde, but all evidence for this is circumstantial. One possible reason for Schubert's leaving the symphony incomplete is the predominance of the same meter (triple meter). The first movement is in 4, the second in 8 and the third (an incomplete scherzo) again in 4. Three consecutive movements in basically the same meter rarely occur in classical symphonies, sonatas, or chamber works.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Symphony No. 8” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.