# What unfinished piece do you most wish had been finished?



## R3PL4Y (Jan 21, 2016)

Like the title says, what unfinished piece of music do y'all most wish the composer had been able to finish themselves? For me, it is a toss up between Mahler 10 and Bruckner 9 (with revisions of course)


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I wouldn't waste my vote on the Mahler since he pretty much already finished it besides the orchestration.


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## Boldertism (May 21, 2015)

I'm not sure he even started a 10th Symphony, but I want Beethoven's 10th Symphony.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Schubert 8th symphony. (For once I'm first with one of the super obvious answers.)


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Boldertism said:


> I'm not sure he even started a 10th Symphony, but I want Beethoven's 10th Symphony.


Yes. Beethoven's 10th is the one to have. He apparently started it because someone has, working from a lot of fragments believed to be for the 10th, assembled the first movement. Here it is on You Tube. I haven't listened through. Kind of a let down because it is not the real thing, just an educated assemblage of those fragments (and probably a good bit of connective additions) that the master may not have used all of, or may have changed significantly.


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

A Mahler 11th would have been amazing!
Scriabin Mysterium anyone? I'd do many things for that to have been completed, but all we're left with is a small prelude and the 3 hour Nemtin imagining, which is nowhere near what it would've been! :devil:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Sibelius's 8th symphony.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Everything that was incomplete by Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Puccini, Handel, Haydn.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

ArtMusic said:


> Everything that was incomplete by Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Puccini, Handel, Haydn.


I second this.:tiphat:


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## znapschatz (Feb 28, 2016)

There are many good candidates for this category, but my vote is for the finale of Turandot. The present stick-on version is so unsatisfying. How inconvenient for Puccini to have checked out when he did.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

As Woodduck already mentioned Sibelius' 8th, I will put in a vote for his unfinished early opera _The Building of the Boat_.


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## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

Maybe obvious and banal, but Mozart's Requiem is my candidate No.1.
Why on earth is it always performed till the end? Mozart didn't leave anything from the Sanctus on.
It's really very hard to escape from the feeling that the final parts of the Requiem substantially differ from what could have been in Mozart's mind.


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## Hmmbug (Jun 16, 2014)

Art of the Fugue, anyone?

Although it is kind of cool the way he leaves off in the middle of one of his greatest masterworks.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

GioCar said:


> Maybe obvious and banal, but *Mozart's Requiem* is my candidate No.1.
> Why on earth is it always performed till the end? Mozart didn't leave anything from the Sanctus on.
> It's really very hard to escape from the feeling that the final parts of the Requiem substantially differ from what could have been in Mozart's mind.


Yes I think Mozart requiem is top of the list. It's actually pretty good as it is as Beethoven was reputed to have remarked: 'If Mozart did not write the music, then the man who wrote it was a Mozart.' Of course, Sussmayr was no Mozart but just how much did he know of Mozart's intentions?
The other piece by Mozart is La Clemenza da Tito which the secco Recitatives were left to his pupil - just what Mozart would have done with them if he had lived is intriguing.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Definitely not, if the result would be anything like the currently available completions: Schubert 8 and Bruckner 9. I love them as they are.

The Mozart requiem is a candidate, but I am with those who actually quite like the current completed version. The same with Mahler 10.

I'd pick Puccini's Turandot.


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

Either of Debussy's operas based on stories by Poe.


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## Bevo (Feb 22, 2015)

Not sure if this really counts considering that it wasn't at the end of his life or anything, but I sure wish Beethoven had finished that Oboe Concerto. It would have been nice to have heard Beethoven's 6th Piano Concerto as well. Schubert's 8th Symphony is another obvious choice for me as well. Even though he abandoned it by choice, using part of it for the 3rd Piano Concerto, a completed Tchaikovsky's Symphony in E-flat would have been intriguing as well. Just a few that interest me.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

GioCar said:


> Maybe obvious and banal, but Mozart's Requiem is my candidate No.1.


I think the obvious ones needs to be said unfortunately there is a scare to be the one who says them because so many wants to appear as special.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Scriabin's Mysterium was largely a fantasy project but who knows it could've turned into a performable orchestral work eventually, something like Prometheus 2.0. That would instantly get my vote.


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## drpraetorus (Aug 9, 2012)

I'll second the Art of the Fugue. I also wish Wagner had started working on the orchestral works he was talking about. He said he was pretty much done with operas.


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## Guest (Jun 15, 2016)

R3PL4Y said:


> Like the title says, what unfinished piece of music do y'all most wish the composer had been able to finish themselves? For me, it is a toss up between Mahler 10 and Bruckner 9 (with revisions of course)


I wonder what Boulez left unfinished? We'll know eventually, I imagine. But in the meantime, as others have already mentioned, I'd have been pretty happy to hear a completed Beethoven X and a completed Bruckner IX, though unlike the LvB X, a team of musicologists have managed to put together a moderately workable performing version of the missing movement of Bruckner IX (which Rattle/BPO have recorded). 
I know many here will pooh-pooh these efforts by Cooper (LvB X) and Samale, Phillips, Cohrs, Mazzuca (AB IX) _et al_, but personally I'm very happy to hear these speculative reconstructions.


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## Mika (Jul 24, 2009)

Alban Berg : Lulu


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Shostakovich's _The Gamblers_ (after Gogol) - abandoned in 1942 after composing one act, it would have made a fine comic follow-up to _The Nose_ (also after Gogol) written about fifteen years earlier.

Reger's _Lateinisches Requiem_ for soloists, choir and orchestra - incomplete at the composer's death in 1916.

Prokofiev's Sonata for Solo Cello - incomplete at the composer's death in 1953. There were numerous compositions of his left unfinished but I opted for this one as Prokofiev didn't write all that much chamber music compared to most other categories.


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## Guest (Jun 15, 2016)

Hmmbug said:


> Art of the Fugue, anyone?
> 
> Although it is kind of cool the way he leaves off in the middle of one of his greatest masterworks.


+1, although I don't think it's all that "cool" that it breaks off!


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## Guest (Jun 15, 2016)

Hmmbug said:


> Art of the Fugue, anyone?


Damn, how could I have forgotten that one !!!


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

I have just watched a performance of "Moses und Aron", and wondered what Schönberg had in mind for Act 3, so let's say "Moses und Aron".

"Lulu", I think it won't really be much different from the Cerha version. And "Turandot"... well, it's difficult to see how even Puccini was going to manage this after the death of Liù.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

^
^

I read that Schoenberg had problems reconciling the 'Smiting of the Rock' episode which was earmarked for the final act, even though he had revised his text for the whole act at least three times. Also, Schoenberg appealed to the Guggenheim Foundation for funding in order to finish the work but was refused: maybe this demotivated him, but perhaps he also felt he just couldn't do total justice to a subject which in his mind demanded the ultimate effort creatively.


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## AndorFoldes (Aug 25, 2012)

Anton Bruckner - Symphony no. 9


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Beethoven 6th piano concerto (ignoring for the moment the piano version of the violin concerto) for which there are some early 'scribblings' of.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

drpraetorus said:


> I also wish Wagner had started working on the orchestral works he was talking about. He said he was pretty much done with operas.


I'd have liked to have heard his Buddhist opera, _Die Sieger_. I imagine it would have been something like _Satyagraha_, but much longer and with fewer laughs.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

schigolch said:


> I have just watched a performance of "Moses und Aron", and wondered what Schönberg had in mind for Act 3, so let's say "Moses und Aron".
> 
> "Lulu", I think it won't really be much different from the Cerha version. And "Turandot"... well, it's difficult to see how even Puccini was going to manage this after the death of Liù.


I'm 100% with you on _Moses und Aron_, but I would have liked to have heard Berg's final thoughts on _Lulu_, good as Cerha's completion is. As for _Turandot_, there are enough great "numbers" in it already, and I wouldn't want to be greedy.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Another vote for Bruckner's 9th. Although it isn't so much incompleted as mostly complete but with its pages stolen, which is really sad.


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

Glazunov's Ninth Symphony.
Bruckner's Ninth though is perfect in its current form given that it was at the final stage of his life, thus a swan song of sorts (the "completed" finale to me feels out of place and superfluous).


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## SimonDekkerLinnros (Jun 15, 2016)

Mozart's Fantasy in D minor.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

Beethoven's 10th for me. Close 2nd is Schubert's 8th but we have more of the Schubert than of the Beethoven.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> Sibelius's 8th symphony.


Interesting. I didn't know he had started an 8th.


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## R3PL4Y (Jan 21, 2016)

As many people have pointed out, Mahler had finished everything but the orchestration of his 10th. However, I can't think of anyone who could orchestrate the way Mahler could, and I still believe that Mahler's untimely death was one of the music world's greatest losses.


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## Bruckner Anton (Mar 10, 2016)

Either of the follows: 
Mozart Requiem
Bach Art of Fugue
Beethoven 10th symphony
Bruckner 9th symphony.

BTW, it seems to me that Schubert probably abandoned his attempt to complete his 8th symphony, as he worked on the third movement in as early as 1822, but in the remaining 6 years, he made almost no progress (only a few bars, and some very fragmented materials). I can not imagine that such a prolific genius (just take a look at what he composed in the last year of his life) did wish to complete the symphony.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Interesting. I didn't know he had started an 8th.


Sibelius worked on an 8th for years, and even hinted at its immanent completion. In the end it didn't pass muster and he burned it. Hope of finding traces of it have pretty much been abandoned, though this might (but might not) represent some rough sketches:


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Sibelius worked on an 8th for years, and even hinted at its immanent completion. In the end it didn't pass muster and he burned it. Hope of finding traces of it have pretty much been abandoned, though this might (but might not) represent some rough sketches:


Sir Thomas Beecham claimed to have actually seen the score.


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## Avey (Mar 5, 2013)

*Charles Ives* would have produced something even more absurd and sprawling than he did, had he finished his _Universe Symphony_. I'd have like to hear it.

_The "Universe in tones" or a Universe Symphony. A striving to present -- to contemplate in tones rather than in music as such, that is -- not exactly within the general term or meaning as it is so understood -- to paint the creation the mysterious beginning of all things, known through God to man, to trace with tonal imprints the vastness, the evolution of all life, in nature of humanity from the great roots of life to the spiritual eternities from the great inknown to the great unknown._

-- written on a sketch page of the work (from Jan Swafford's biography _Charles Ives_)


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Pugg said:


> I second this.:tiphat:


Why thank you sir!


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

Bruckner Anton said:


> it seems to me that Schubert probably abandoned his attempt to complete his 8th symphony


I'm more optimistic. I'm hoping that someone will find a sheet of paper containing the closing bars of the 2nd mvt, with the words "III & IV: Da Capo I & II" written beneath


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## Guest (Jun 17, 2016)

Yeah. Mozart's Requiem for sure. I would love to hear an end to all the controversy over how it was completed and if It was close to what the maestro would have done.


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