# If a magic lamp granted you a wish to make ONE unfinished work completed...



## rice (Mar 23, 2017)

Which would you choose?

I think I'd choose Bruckner's 9th symphony. It's already a masterpiece with 3 movements. The finale must be so brilliant that it can only be played in heaven.:angel:


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## mark6144 (Apr 6, 2019)

Not quite the same thing, but I would wish for Haydn's lost piano sonatas to be found (for real this time).


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Sibelius's 8th Symphony.

Sibelius said "It will be the reckoning of my whole existence - sixty-eight years. It will probably be my last. Eight symphonies and a hundred songs. It has to be enough."

It was promised to Koussevitzky and others but was ultimately burnt; some sketches were found in the 1990s and the Helsinki Philharmonic under John Storgaards played some 3 minutes of it for the first time in 2011.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Most completions by others I'm rather satisfied with (Mozart's Requiem, Mahler's 10th) or do not like at all (Bruckner's 9th, Schubert's 8th). The Bruckner would be my last choice actually: in its 3 movements it's perfect (in fact my favourite symphony) whereas the completion, apparently based on a lot of Bruckners notes, spoils the work for me.

In the end, I'd pick Mahler 10, just to hear how different the master's orchestration was over the various completions.


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

I'd go for a slight variation on your premise and wish for all the music that Brahms burned before he died.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

*Turandot*. Alfano did the best he could and Berio's take on it is an interesting alternative, but we will never know what the new "big tune" Puccini was planning would be.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I _would _like to hear how Mozart would have finished his Requiem.


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

One contender would be Shostakovich's opera _Igroki_ (_The Gamblers_). He composed around three quarters of an hour's worth of music by 1942 but found setting Gogol's original text word for word too problematical. That was his _official_ reason, but maybe the idea of composing a comic opera at a time when the USSR was struggling badly in the war against Nazi Germany was asking for trouble.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Definitely Sibelius' 8th.


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

The problem with works that composers failed to finish for reasons other than shuffling off this mortal coil, is that there was very often a reason for them not finishing which would make the work less than brilliant. There are so many fragments of works by Shostakovich - the abandoned Ninth symphony, for example, and the Gamblers (above) that were either not coming along spiffingly or were not expected to go down well; indeed I also suspect the latter was the case for the Gamblers.

I think the same argument could be made of Bruckner's ninth. It's not like he didn't have time to finish it - worked on the whole piece for close to ten years; he seemingly couldn't, not satisfactorily anyway.

And why did Schoenberg not finish Die Jakobsleiter or Moses und Aron.......I find both remarkably satisfying works (especially the latter) as they are, so I am not bothered about speculating, although I would like to hear Zoltan Kocsis' completion of the opera.

I would like to have AN eighth symphony from Sibelius, but the snippets recently recorded by John Storgards are remarkably uninteresting. Did he have another big work in him, or was he "composed out"?

I cannot tell how different Bartok's Third Piano Concerto would have been had he properly finished it. Near as dammit identical, I suspect; but he would have polished his Viola Concerto, so that would have been worth having.

I would simply love to be able to hear whichever works got burned along with their creator when Alberic Magnard stood up to invading soldiers back in 1914.....Yolande, perhaps?

Different circumstances, but I wonder if there were any masterpieces among the burnt manuscripts of Geirr Tveitt?

My final vote would have to go to the Mahler 10, despite the total absence of dissatisfaction I have with the performing versions and completions we have. It is a truly wonderful piece, but I struggle to imagine how much more wonderful it would or could have been.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

Beethoven's 10th in Eb major, Mozart's Requiem, or this:

"By 25 December 1886/6 January 1887 the scenario for the ballet was still not finalised, and Tchaikovsky wrote to Ivan Vsevolozhsky to ask for a postponement:

"Do not think that I lack the desire to write the music for _Undina_. But I need sufficient leisure and strength to do it well, for it is not merely a question of concocting some sort of commonplace ballet music; it is my ambition for it to be a masterpiece of the genre, but for this all I need is time".


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

CnC Bartok said:


> The problem with works that composers failed to finish for reasons other than shuffling off this mortal coil, is that there was very often a reason for them not finishing which would make the work less than brilliant. There are so many fragments of works by Shostakovich - the abandoned Ninth symphony, for example, and the Gamblers (above) that were either not coming along spiffingly or were not expected to go down well; indeed I also suspect the latter was the case for the Gamblers.
> 
> I think the same argument could be made of Bruckner's ninth. It's not like he didn't have time to finish it - worked on the whole piece for close to ten years; he seemingly couldn't, not satisfactorily anyway.
> 
> ...


Yes, both are substantial works and it's a pity neither were finished. In the case of _Moses und Aron_, it has been suggested that Schoenberg couldn't reconcile the various biblical sources for the episodes which would have comprised act III, such as the smiting of the rock. There were other negating factors - his libretto was rewritten at least twice, and having to adapt to a new life in the USA may have interrupted the creative process. Ultimately, perhaps Schoenberg decided that the subject was so overwhelming that his music simply couldn't do it justice.

The failure to complete _Die Jakobsleiter_ was probably the result of Schoenberg's music having changed too much from when he began it to the time when he abandoned it - he may have completed _Gurre-Lieder_ after years of neglect but I'm guessing that he didn't want to breathe life into another work which was by then unrepresentative of his current style.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

For me it would certainly be the Mozart Requiem and the C minor Mass


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## Ras (Oct 6, 2017)

Bach's Art of Fugue.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Mozart's Requiem or Mahler's 10th.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Mozart, Mahler, Schubert, Berg’s Lulu, and Schoenberg’s Moses and Aron. I am convinced that Bach never intended to complete the AoTF, that it was deliberately left incomplete because he had plenty of time to complete it if he’d wanted to. The finale of Bruckner’s 9th is essentially complete except for a few bars, and I never expected an 8th Symphony from Sibelius because I believe he was essentially burned out as a composer by that stage in his life. I regret the destruction of numerous scores by Paul Dukas, Brahms, and Sibelius. But the one score that I regret not being finished by the composer was Mozart’s Requiem, not only because of the work itself but the dreadful conditions at the close of his life. Bach lived another 30 years by comparison. Mahler had 20 more years than Schubert and the last year of Schubert’s life was tremendous creatively. If only the many years that Sibelius did essentially nothing but drink could have been distributed to Mozart, Schubert, and Mahler, what wonders we could undoubtedly behold.


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Larkenfield said:


> I am convinced that Bach never intended to complete the AoTF, that it was deliberately left incomplete because he had plenty of time to complete it if he'd wanted to.


No, he was unable to complete it, because he was ill in his last years of life.


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

Mahler’s 10th or the planned Hendrix/ Miles collaboration


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Lulu or Mahler 10, tossup.

Probably should say Art of Fugue but to be honest I'm not that interested.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Where's Rosemary Brown when we need her?


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

*Glazunov*
*Symphony no. IX in D (1910)*
-->This composer was clearly onto something different given the circumstances of Russia at the time (the Russian Silver Age was winding down, upheavals and violent changes left and right). It would have been interesting what the stark, almost morbid first movement would have yielded to had Glazunov finished the project off.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Scriabins the Mysterium, no doubt about it


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

https://www.talkclassical.com/63269-fugue-subjects-mozart-mass.html#post1709066


hammeredklavier said:


> The fugue subjects of Mozart Mass in C minor K427 (Gloria, Cum Sanctu Spiritu, Sanctus-Osanna) can combine. There is a speculation that if Mozart finished the mass, he would have ended the piece with a final fugue combining all the subjects because they can work together as a multi-subject fugue.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

the first I can think of:
John Foulds - Avatara 

or
Nikolai Obukhov - The book of life


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

Jacck said:


> Scriabins the Mysterium, no doubt about it


Good choice! A megalomaniac piece of claptrap, or a great and true vision? We'll never know.....


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

mbhaub said:


> Where's Rosemary Brown when we need her?


After a fifth of rye "unconscious composition" was also Stravinsky's method too!


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Beethoven's Cello Concerto. Although he didn't actually begin one, he must have thought about it at some point. He merely failed to bring it to fruition!


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## Brahmsian Colors (Sep 16, 2016)

Sibelius' Eighth Symphony


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Jacck said:


> Scriabins the Mysterium, no doubt about it


Agreed, or even just a (completed) part of it. The "realization" by Nemtin is pretty great, but I feel it's too much of a broad-strokes thing, like film music. The symphonic poems by Scriabin are much more compact and richer in detail. More orchestral music in that style would've been fantastic.

Sibelius 8th is also very alluring....


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## FleshRobot (Jan 27, 2014)

It's too hard to come up with a answer for this, but I will go with La chute de la maison Usher by Debussy for now.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

FleshRobot said:


> It's too hard to come up with a answer for this, but I will go with La chute de la maison Usher by Debussy for now.


Very interesting choice.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Bruckner 9..........................


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## Duncan (Feb 8, 2019)

Category:Unfinished musical compositions -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Unfinished_musical_compositions

Category: Unfinished concertos -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Unfinished_concertos

Category: Unfinished operas -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Unfinished_operas

Category: Unfinished string quartets -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Unfinished_string_quartets

Category: Unfinished symphonies -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Unfinished_symphonies

Personal choices - 1) a. Mahler 10th and 1) b. Bruckner 9


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

Beethovens.........


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I could go for Beethoven's opera _Macbeth _(not mentioned in the Amazon list). Ludwig noodled with that one for a while and used some of his ideas for the witch's cauldron scene in his Ghost Trio Op. 70 No. 1. Or so it is said by those who claim to know!


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## MatthewWeflen (Jan 24, 2019)

Beethoven's 10th, if only to see how in the world he would have attempted to follow the 9th.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I wonder if our impression of Wagner would have been different if he had persevered with Die Sieger (The Victors), an opera on a Buddhist subject that he sketched in 1856?


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## StevenOBrien (Jun 27, 2011)

KenOC said:


> I could go for Beethoven's opera _Macbeth _(not mentioned in the Amazon list). Ludwig noodled with that one for a while and used some of his ideas for the witch's cauldron scene in his Ghost Trio Op. 70 No. 1. Or so it is said by those who claim to know!


Mozart was also apparently planning to write an adaption of Shakespeare's Tempest shortly before he died. Could you imagine! https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/07/in-search-of-mozarts-tempest/


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## WildThing (Feb 21, 2017)

Mozart's Requiem, Mahler's 10th, Bruckner's 9th are some obvious choices, and it would be amazing to see what their composers could have done with those works. But I'll throw out a curve ball and say Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann...its an absolutely delightful, poignant, and tuneful work and one of my favorite operas, but all the different editions and recordings we have of it are an absolute hodgepodge. Some have recitative, others dialogue; the orders of the acts are always interchangeable; music from other Offenbach pieces has been shoehorned into the opera; and even the basic plot changes with each interpreter reconstructing bits and pieces to their own taste. I would have loved to see and hear what this masterpiece would have turned out to be under Offenbach's hand.


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## Texas Chain Saw Mazurka (Nov 1, 2009)

I'm used to AotF and Schubert's Unfinished the way they are, they already seem complete. Of course, I don't know what I'm missing.


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## David Phillips (Jun 26, 2017)

The Gustav Holst's symphony he was working on up to his death. We have the orchestrated scherzo movement which is of excellent quality.


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## Janspe (Nov 10, 2012)

I would _love_ to have the complete orchestrated re-imaginations of Boulez's _Douze notations_ for piano. The five that he managed to finish are some of my favourite modern orchestral pieces, and when played together they form a great whole. What could have been...

Of the more traditional choices, Mozart's _Requiem_, Mahler's 10th and Bartók's _Viola Concerto_ are very much at the top for me. Also the late sonatas that Debussy never managed to compose, just thinking about how they might have been makes me sad.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Anything Charles Ives didn't finish. But it's hard to tell....oh, yeah, if it explodes at the end, it's finished.

Nothing by Webern, because all his stuff fits on 2 CDs.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

In late 1814 and early 1815, Beethoven sketched the first movement of a piano concerto in D major, what would, if completed, have been the Sixth Concerto. He made about seventy pages of sketches for the first movement and started writing out a full score; this runs almost uninterrupted from the beginning of the movement to the middle of the solo exposition, although the scoring becomes patchy as the work proceeds and there are signs of indecision or dissatisfaction on the composer's part. This torso of a movement represents one of the most substantial of Beethoven's unrealized conceptions.

Why did Beethoven abandon it? A number of circumstantial reasons might be adduced: perhaps he planned it for the cancelled benefit concert of 1815, or perhaps he intended to play the solo part himself and abandoned the project when his deafness made this impractical.

There are however some musical features that may bear upon the issue: the style is at several points distinctly retrospective, and the materials are curiously symphonic for a piano concerto. As a result the piano part comes across as decorating an essential symphonic argument rather than representing a dramatic agent in its own right. There is some evidence (though Lewis Lockwood has contested it) that Beethoven recognized this problem and experimented with alternative structural plans for the movement at a relatively late stage in its composition.


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

millionrainbows said:


> Nothing by Webern, because all his stuff fits on 2 CDs.


Wrong! It's 3CDs for Webern, unless you're thinking of Ruggles. That said, the still unpublished Celibidache Webern Edition stretches to 12 CDs. :devil::tiphat:


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

5:50






Mitsuko Uchida's "attempt to finish" the piece


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

hammeredklavier said:


> 5:50
> 
> 
> 
> ...


So much here that Chopin drew from.


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## StevenOBrien (Jun 27, 2011)

janxharris said:


> So much here that Chopin drew from.


You'd probably like


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

StevenOBrien said:


> You'd probably like


Thanks - in general Mozart and the classical era doesn't work for me.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

Beethoven's 10th. It would be a marvellous dream if I could listen to that new gravitational force.


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## R3PL4Y (Jan 21, 2016)

Either Sibelius no 8 or Mahler no 10.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

"The Mystery of Edwin Drood"


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## Dimace (Oct 19, 2018)

Bruckner's 9th (what else…), Beethoven's 6th PC and Mozart's Requiem.


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