FINISHING THE “UNFINISHED”

Evening Star, Issue 19658, 10 September 1927, Page 17

FINISHING THE “UNFINISHED”

SACRILEGE OR BENEFIT,? According to a Vienna message the centenary next year of tho death of Schubert is to be celebrated by a competition among composers, who will bo invited to add a scherzo and a finale to tho two famous movements which are known all the world over as Selinbert’s ‘Unfinished Symphony.’ ‘The Times' is scornful of the idea. “ Tllo project is worthy,” it states, “of'the enterprising Jinn of gramophone manufacturers who offer the prizes, The musical world is to be mapped by them into ten zones, in each of which there will bo three awards, while the best of tho thirty work? produced will receive tho first prize of £2,DUO. Thus, while Schubert’s modest effort at present makes only two gramophone records, the additions to it may make at least sixty. By such means tho composition of music is organised, and the obscure art of an individual who died penniless 100 years ago is utilised for the advancement of a flourishing industry to-day. It may be pointed out for the comfort of those who are inclined to cry ‘ sacrilege and vandalism,’ as a correspondent did a few days ago, that the thing will do no harm to Schubert. If sculptors were invited to put arms to tho Venus of Milo or painters to touch up the ‘ Last Supper ’ on the wall of Santa Maria della Grazia, the outcry would be justified, because afterwards these masterpieces could never ho the same again. But music is more secure against vandalism than tho plastic arts. The composer’s score is not the music; it is merely a recipo for making music which has "no actual existence until the musicians put its directions into practice. If all the composers of the -world, spurred on by the hope of winning the thousands of the Columbia Gramophone Company, should not only add their own ideas to Schubert’s, hut completely transform his to accord with the latest fashion in cacopliany, we should still have Schubert’s recipe and we should still have musicians capable of distinguishing between it and the up-to-date versions. Lovers of Schubert have nothing to fear. His sensitive and personal art has been subject to those onslaughts from the timo of Liszt’s paraphrase on ‘ Der Erlkonig ’ to the production of ‘ Lilac Time,’ and always the immeasurable gulf between what he wrote and what others write for him widens.

“ The one thing which docs surprise us about this enterprise,” ‘The Times’ "oes on, “ is that the venerable Gesellschaft der Musiki'reuncle of Vienna should bo associated in it. The expansion of musical commerce has not hitherto been it» concern. Throughout the course of its long career (Schubert felt himself "honored in becoming a member of it) it has existed to draw iust that distinction between the genuine and the counterfeit work of art which only a society of artists can draw. Wo should have expected its members to know that suck a thing as the ‘ Unfinished Symphony’ is the treasure that it ia simply because it is the product of a unique mind expressing itself spontaneously and without calculated effort; that no amount of taking thought on the part of other minds can produce a replica of it, and that the ono hope for modern music ia that its composers should write spontaneously, as Schubert did, and not as the copyists of a model, however famous. These are considerations which may be meaningless to the organisers of the musical industry, but they must bo intelligible to those who call themselves ‘ the friends of music.) A musical correspondent, approving of ‘The Times’ article, wrote: “There are some, I think, who would go even farther and characterise this proposed completion of Schubert’s ‘ Unfinished ’ as an unwarrantable > interference with a masterpiece to which, for aught wo can tell, the composer himself may have refused to ad<l a note. The symphony certainly was regarded as in two movements only when he presented it in 1822 to the Musical Society at Graz, in return for the compliment of being elected an honorary member. If he had intended to VompJeto it, would ho have parted with the score? “ Lovers of a great work will thank you, sir, for having pointed out that no additional movements, by whomsoever they be written, can detract from, any more than they can add to, tho immaculate purity and perfection of the original. Musicians know only too well what has come in the past of the nefarious practices of the “arch-meddlers,” as wo used to call them. Additional accompaniments have been harmful enough, even when furnished by the gifted hands of a Mozart, let alone a Michael Costa or an Ebcnezor Prout. But the contemplation of two whole additional movements, plastered on to Schubert’s ‘ Unfinished ’ symphony, and to be heard through the medium of a gramophone, is almost more than the ordinary musical soul auc encompass with patience. It is true that the plaster in this instance will not conceal the work of art, as it has done in tho case of many a lovely fresco; but the contact, all the same, is objectionable, and it generally leaves some specks of dirt behind.” Dr Walford Davies, a lending British musician, begs to differ. “It is easy,” ho writes, “ to share the natural shock tho proposed international competition brings to Schubert lovers. Yet it seems to mo one of the best things, that could happen to music and to musicians at the moment to recall us to _ clear thoughts and a sane outlook. Given a thousand casts of the Venus of Milo, what could be better for sculpture today than to set a thousand students fcompetitively if need be) hunting for the perfect arms? All depends upon the spirit in which this Schubert enterprise is undertaken. It seems to mo that the right spirit can be engendered and kept up, and that neither righteous horror nor reproof is so timely as encouragement. “ Tho disparity of earthly reward, when the student imitator is to receive £2,000 for his two movements, while the man of genius received nothing for his, is as negligible as most of tho world’s quaint disciplinary ways, with her sons, great and small. “I may dare to add that personally I cannot believe that Schubert himself, were he alive, could have finished that which being unfinished is so pexfcct. To turn to a flippant simile for a moment, I have heard that Mr Charlie Chaplin once entered a competition for the best imitation of his own inimitable antics and came out fourteenth! Seriously, I for one hope, if I can, to try to enter the Schubert competition—probably in private—and shall await the sixty gramophone records of the other fellows’ efforts with keen and reverent zest,—reverent I mean of music itself and of Schubert, who is so honored and of every decent effort that may he made to match his matchless beauty of line and balance of design.”