Franz SCHUBERT Symphony No. 8 in B minor, “Unfinished” (1822)
Lecture

Francis Albou, music critic and musicologist

People love to shroud Schubert’s Symphony in B minor in mystery. Two movements instead of four! … That’s enough to fuel all sorts of speculation about it… Yet our determination to find an answer should not overshadow the exceptional qualities of a work that ranks among the most beautiful in the symphonic repertoire. Yet it is quite difficult to find comments here and there that explain the marvels that Schubert—at the age of 25—wove into it: a supreme melodic inspiration underscored by an extremely refined instrumentation. But also a formal structure, entirely unprecedented, that reinvents the famous sonata form, thus discreetly paving the way for Bruckner.

“The Unfinished” is not the only work by Schubert to embody a profound aesthetic and moral crisis during the painful years of 1819–23, when he was stricken with syphilis. The young, impassioned master would gradually move away from this dramatic period—and the works that evoke it—by adopting a new style that would culminate three years later in the Ninth Symphony—in four movements—and his final masterpieces.