# Let's talk unfinished symphonies (completed or not completed by another)



## Albert7

Okay, let's do some scholarly talk about unfinished symphonies...

so far I've collated a few:

Mahler 10th- Cooke completion, etc.

Schubert 7th- completed in three versions

Schubert 10th- no clue what this is yet

Schubert incomplete symphonic fragments whatever those are.

Need help learning about this ... can anyone tell me more about unfinished symphonies and how those were completed by others or left incomplete?


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## DavidA

The Schubert 8th is the obvious one!


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## nightscape

Enescu's incomplete Symphony No. 5 reconstructed by Pascal Bentoiu.


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## DavidA

And Bruckner's 9th the mpletion of which has been recorded by Rattle in a disappointing reading.


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## Chronochromie

The so-called Schubert 10th has 3 movements complete in piano sketch, it just needed orchestration, though it isn't clear if the 3rd movement was meant as the finale.


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## brotagonist

DavidA said:


> And Bruckner's 9th the mpletion of which has been recorded by Rattle in a disappointing reading.


I liked it a lot :tiphat:

The average rating on the US Amazon is 4.5* over 27 reviews; on the UK site, 4.5* over 40 reviews. Classics Today gives it 9/10 for both artistic and sound qualities. The BBC review: "Rattle's new finale is a resounding success, full of boundary-pushing harmonies." Allmusic: 5*. Music Web International: 9/10. Alex Ross: " What I found really riveting about this Ninth was the changed nature of the symphonic journey."

Ross sums up exactly what I experienced. Bruckner dedicated the symphony "dem _lieben Gott_" and that is exactly what I heard and felt as I listened. There was no mistaking.


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## PetrB

*Luciano Berio ~ Rendering.*.

Schubert's incomplete 10th symphony, not in a reconstruction but a full three-movement orchestral performing version. Where their are gaps in the original of Schubert's sketches, Berio freely filled them in with a mix of the existing Schubert materials but in Berio's own manner -- making any guesses as to an actual reconstruction. Those newly composed segments by Berio are cued in with the celesta:


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## SONNET CLV

Alexander Glazunov's Symphony No. 9 in D minor was begun in 1910, but was still unfinished by the time of his death in 1936. Gavril Yudin orchestrated the first movement piano sketch. My OLYMPIA disc OCD147 AAD titled "A Russian Concert No. 2" features a recording of this orchestrated movement with Yudin himself conducting the USSR Radio Symphony Orchestra. The movement is 10'24" in length.









It has also been recorded by Alexander Anisimov and the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra for Naxos and José Serebrier and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. There may be others. Unfortunately, it does not appear to be included in Fedoseyev's collection of the "Complete Symphonies" with the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra on the Cascade label.


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## SONNET CLV

And of course there's the Beethoven 10th. 

Barry Cooper, anyone?


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## SONNET CLV

And Elgar's Third.


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## elgar's ghost

Ives's 'Universe' symphony. Although the two completions that I have heard are well-intended it really needed Ives's inimitable imprint from beginning to end in order to give us the true picture of what was obviously a rather ambitious and singular work.


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## Art Rock

I have heard the various Schuberts mentioned, Bruckner's 9th, and Mahler's 10th. Of these, I love Mahler, and absolutely hate what was done to Schubert 8 and Bruckner 9 (both among my favourite works in the unfinished version).


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## Woodduck

SONNET CLV said:


> And Elgar's Third.


I love the Elgar Third. The slow movement may be the darkest and most profound in all his music. Congratulations to Anthony Payne.


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## donnie a

The Borodin Third. I love the existing two movements.


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## SONNET CLV

Perhaps the unfinished symphony I most crave to hear is the Eighth Symphony by Sibelius. Alas ...


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## Woodduck

SONNET CLV said:


> Perhaps the unfinished symphony I most crave to hear is the Eighth Symphony by Sibelius. Alas ...


Let's all sing together now: "When you wish upon a star..."


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## Marschallin Blair

Woodduck said:


> Let's all sing together now: "When you wish upon a star..."


Sibelius' _Eighth_?- the Greatest Story Never Told.

One can only imagine what it sounded like.

The Fourth didn't sound anything like the Fifth, and the Seventh didn't sound anything like the Fifth or the Sixth--- so one can only wonder.


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## Richannes Wrahms

These are some sketches, supposedly of the 8th but there's no way to be sure. We know that Sibelius sent a manuscript with one movement of it to his copyist, manuscript/copy which may or may not still exist.


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## Woodduck

These bits are fascinating, whether or not they represent work on the 8th Symphony. Trademark Sibelianisms - winds in parallel thirds, pedal points, timpani rolls, overlapping or dovetailing tonalities - appear along with some starker dissonance than we hear even in the 4th Symphony. As isolated and undigested as these fragments are, they suggest that Sibelius may have been playing with ideas for moving his work toward greater harmonic roughness and ambiguity, perhaps feeling challenged by contemporary developments and accusations of provincialism. We know, for example, that he admired Bartok, considering him the greatest composer of the day. As late as 1943 he said "For each of my symphonies I have developed a special technique. It can't be something superficial, it has to be something that has been lived though. In my new work I am struggling with precisely these issues." Perhaps this need to move forward, yet remain himself, was a problem he could not solve, along with his general insecurity, his alcoholism and depressions, and the lessening of energy and creative drive that besets people in their late years (Sibelius was 65 in 1930).

Here is Wikipedia on the 8th:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._8_(Sibelius)


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## Marschallin Blair

Richannes Wrahms said:


> These are some sketches, supposedly of the 8th but there's no way to be sure. We know that Sibelius sent a manuscript with one movement of it to his copyist, manuscript/copy which may or may not still exist.


Thank you for posting this. _;D_


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## Becca

You should watch the interview that Semyon Bychkov gave on the Digital Concert Hall when he performed _Rendering_ (it is free access). Bychkov knew Berio at the time that he was working on the piece and he showed Bychkov the sketches from which he was working.


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## Becca

Tchaikovsky's 7th in E flat as reconstucted/imagined by Taneyev and Bogatryrev. The work was started between the 5th & 6h but then abandoned. Tchaikovsky later reused the first movement as the _Piano Concerto #3_. Taneyev took other parts of it and published it as the _Andante & Finale_ op. posth. 79. In the 1950's Bogatryrev reconstructed the full symphony from the concerto and the _Andante & Finale_. He also added an orchestration of the _Scherzo-Fantasie _op. 72 #10 in order to make it a four movement work. It is an interesting piece, definitely Tchaikovskian even if lacking some of the innovative flair that he would have given had he finished it.


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## Albert7

Thanks for all of the awesome information. Now I need to compile some recordings together.


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