When we look at a work of art as left to us by its creator, our natural response is to regard it in its entirety and think of it as whole. In other words, it is what the artist meant for us to see or hear. And yet there are paintings, sculptures, plays, books, symphonies and operas that are famously unfinished, either because their creators died, were distracted by other projects or exigencies, or found no creative means to finish those works.
Sometimes there are works of art that become partially or largely lost. We either appreciate the remaining pieces as enticing “what-ifs,” or in a few cases, other artists attempt to construct new works (using the surviving bits) in the spirit of the originals.
A superb example of a beloved fragment is “Il Lamento di Arianna” (“Ariadne’s Lament”), the only surviving piece from Claudio Monteverdi’s second opera, Arianna (1608). Monteverdi was the first great opera composer and there are all kinds of performances of his music leading up to the 450th anniversary of his birth in 2017. This extended aria has Ariadne bemoaning her abandonment by Theseus.
It may seem like the conclusion of the opera, but the aria comes earlier. Later, Ariadne becomes the bride of Bacchus, which might be considered “marrying up.” We know this because, though most of the opera’s music is lost, we have the complete libretto in eight scenes by Ottavio Rinuccini.
Mozarteans often cite Zaide (which the composer called Das Serail), a singspiel from 1779, as an example of an incomplete work. He stopped composing it when he received a more lucrative offer to write Idomeneo. His wife found fragments of Das Serail after his death in 1791, but they were not published until 1838. Most people would be hard-pressed to hum anything from this opera apart from one popular aria for soprano, “Ruhe sanft, mein holdes Leben.”
Music lovers can name famous examples of unfinished compositions. There are Bruckner’s Ninth and Mahler’s 10th symphonies, both of which were completed by other musicians. If we think of Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 in B minor (1822) as the “Unfinished,” it is because it only has two movements and was composed at a time when most every symphony had four. This mystical and ghostly music is extraordinary. It was not performed in public until 1865, 37 years after the composer's death, and must have sounded modern and different even then.
We can speculate why Schubert did not complete it. He was already ill with syphilis but did not die until 1828. He went on to write more songs, chamber music and the Symphony No. 9 in D-major (1826), known as the “Great” Symphony. The Ninth, with its four movements and marvelous narrative arc, feels complete. In contrast, I think that the Eighth Symphony has been unfairly saddled with its nickname. If it had another kind of name, such as symphonic poem or fantasia, we would revere it without sensing that something is missing.
With Schubert’s Eighth Symphony, at least we know that every note was his. Problems can happen when a composer is asked to complete a colleague’s unfinished work. Probably the most notorious example of this is when poor Franco Alfano was hired to complete the last act of Puccini’s Turandot based on the late composer’s notes and sketches. During the opera’s premiere at La Scala in 1926, conductor Arturo Toscanini famously stopped the performance to inform the audience that it had just heard Puccini’s last notes. Ever since, because of Toscanini’s act, Alfano’s music has been written off as inferior. Luciano Berio was spared such a dismissive reception in his 2001 completion of the opera.
A much more successful completion of an opera is Alban Berg’s Lulu. He began work in 1929 and, at his death in 1937, had completed two acts along with the first 268 bars and the finale of the third. After Berg’s death, Erwin Stein completed a vocal score for act three, but it was not until the 1970s that Friedrich Cerha used the composer’s sketches to produce a “completed” opera. This new version premiered in Paris in 1979, conducted by Pierre Boulez and starring Teresa Stratas. Before that, Lulu was performed as Berg left it. I have seldom heard a complaint about the musical quality of the three-act version, and at this point, we would only return to the “incomplete” version for reasons of novelty or scholarship.
In making notes for this article, I came to realize how important the choice of words can be. Something that is “not finished” (or “unfinished”) is not necessarily “incomplete” (or the more rarely-used “uncompleted”). Because the Italian language is a font of so much artistic terminology, I often go to it for more refined understanding. In talking about works of art that are not finished, the preferred term is non finito. Then there is incompiuto, which means incomplete. There is a subtle difference, I believe, between unfinished and incomplete. The former suggests that the creator stopped work for one reason or another, perhaps because circumstances prevented the work from being finished, but the work of art still has considerable impact. Or perhaps the artist decided that the work stood on its own in its unfinished state and made the active decision not to finish it. “Incomplete” suggests to me that work has ceased and the art work does not stand on its own. By these definitions, Schubert’s Eighth Symphony is unfinished rather than incomplete. And perhaps Lulu, in its original version, was incomplete.
I will close this article by posing a question: Antoni Gaudí began work on the Basilica de la Sagrada Família in 1883 and was en route to work when he was killed by a streetcar in 1926. The work had gone very slowly and had many setbacks and yet Sagrada Família exerts an immense fascination. Do you think the church is unfinished? Incomplete? Or is it an extraordinary work of art on its own terms? Please respond in the comments section below.