Brain Food #540
On sharing our work, even though it is unfinished
Thoughts of the day
There is something fascinating about unfinished work, and one would argue there is no other unfinished work more famous than Franz Schubert’s 8th, more commonly known as the Unfinished Symphony. Schubert had six more years left to live when he wrote it, but the piece was never finished, with only two movements fully composed out of the four that is the norm.
Schubert had a reputation of being disorganised, and many argue that the symphony was indeed finished, but Schubert just never put the paperwork together. Others say he was simply too busy focusing on other pieces that he did eventually finish.
Before dying, Schubert gave the manuscript to a friend, Anselm Hüttenbrenner, who kept it for himself until he showed it to a conductor, decades later. The symphony premiered on this day in 1865, forty-three years after it was written, and thirty-seven after Schubert’s death.
No one knows if the composer set out to break conventions, or if the piece just had a different fate. It is, after all, perfectly acceptable to give up sometimes. But it could also be that, to the eyes of others, what we consider to still need work may not be so unfinished after all.
If you were forwarded this email and you'd like to receive more, you can sign up and receive it daily in your inbox.
And if you love Brain Food and want the world to know about it, feel free to share it with them.
If you have any questions, thoughts, ideas you'd like to share, just hit reply.
Read longer Brain Food musings on Medium.