Monday Music Appreciation #30: The Unfinished Symphony

After getting my first university degree, I took a gap year to travel with an international, educational and cultural group of young people known as Up With People. My 100+ castmates and I toured through the US, Eastern Canada, and Western Europe performing a musical revue-type show known as Time for the Music, which featured a song called Unfinished World. It borrowed a musical motif from Schubert's Unfinished Symphony that still gives me goosebumps. 

Schubert's orchestral work was one that he wrote as an "audition" of sorts, and it was set aside for other compositions. He had no way of knowing that he would only live another 6 years. 

Then his score was forgotten in another musician's cupboard for 43 years before "premiering" in Vienna. It is far superior to the 80s rock-ballad that we were singing in Time for the Music. Still, it reminds me of a time of youthful exuberance, so I was delighted to hear it twice while ushering at the Winspear Centre for Music last week. 

The Unfinished (Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D759) has two parts, but I'll just leave the Allegro moderato here. The melody that starts at about a minute and a half into the piece and is thrown back and forth among the different stringed and wind instruments several times fills me with joy every time I hear it.

Who am I kidding -- the whole piece does!

Enjoy!