Favorite Unfinished Symphonies or Symphonic Fragments

[not edward]

Like Sid I too hear the "unfinished" Ninth as quite dark, and the revised Eighth has that magnificent, and depressing, Coriolan-like coda to the first movement.

The first movement of the Ninth has a cataclysmic first climax and then it never lightens up. If, as a reviewer once wrote, the Eighth's Scherzo is the sound of the engine of heaven, then surely the Ninth's Scherzo is the engine of hell. And I've always heard the Ninth's Adagio as a tragic loss of faith (or innocence): those shrieking dissonances near the end gut-wrenching.

Sarge

I think the 9th in its three-movement truncated form is an extraordinarily dark work. Like you, I've often thought of the slow movement in terms of a loss of faith; it's purely speculative, but having heard some of the sketches for the finale I wonder if Bruckner was not building a "loss and return of faith" narrative in the work.

I once heard a bootleg of Boulez conducting the 9th, I think with the WP. I felt the outer movements were good rather than great, but the scherzo was frankly terrifying, even by Furtwangler standards.

[starrynight]

You may be thinking of the 7th? Newbould's version of the 10th has only three movements and goes for about 27.30 (Marriner recording). (The 7th has four movements and goes for 38.20.)

Schubert's 10th as realised by Newbould does have some of the grandeur heard in his earlier 9th imo.   And of course Beethoven must have been a huge influence on him and perhaps he had taken on that mantle in some ways after Beethoven died.

[RJR]

There is a possibility that Schubert's Unfinished really was and that the 2nd movement was the finished fourth movement. It would have made a lovely fourth movement in a four movement symphony. Bartok completed the last movement of his Concerto for Orchestra before all the other movements.

[Jo498]

There is a possibility that Schubert's Unfinished really was and that the 2nd movement was the finished fourth movement. It would have made a lovely fourth movement in a four movement symphony.

No. The Andante in E major is completely impossible as a last (4th) movement in this symphony. There is the reasonable supposition that the b minor movement that became an Entr'acte in Rosamunde could have been the finale. Or maybe not.
Schubert probably left more "long fragments" (i.e. complete movements or complete movements + movement fragments belonging to them) than any other well-known composer. Apparently, when others wrote sketches, he often just composed a movement or two, got stuck, and then moved on to another project.