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About composition
Why do all of us leave works unfinished ? Maybe we are just too lazy to finish all of them, but, things may be a little more complicated than that. At first, let's all agree on what an unfinished work is : it's a work that is lacking completion in one or more of its ingredients. For example, it should last 5 minutes and it only lasts 2 because of poor development. It should invoke the power of an orchestra and it only uses half of its instruments or all of them but in unsatisfactory ways. Sometimes it's the case that a work has just been interrupted and never continued. Speaking in general, an unfinished work leaves more or less of music material to be desired.
One could think of the following reasons for a work to be unfinished :
- Having based the work on an idea or material that later proved inadequate. Instead of changing a lot of stuff, the work was abandoned.
- Sudden change of mood and motives. Not strange for an artist. The works is often continued later.
- Lack of technique that made a composer stop temporarily the process and then sometimes abandon it dissatisfied or even incapable of going on.
- Strong objective reasons that made him stop for ever. For example, lack of funding for large works.
- Random facts that prevented the composer from finishing the job. Illnesses, trips, other obligations, bad mood, anxiety. Sometimes the work is never completed.
- The composer is often working in such a way that many works are being completed at the same time. Not usual but it happens.
- Pure laziness or just too much amateurish view of the whole process.
To help all of us feel a little better, Shostakovich was often working on many works at the same time, Schoenberg often worked on compositions for years trying to find the optimum solutions, composers of the opera often abandon works due to poor libretto and Mozart was himself too lazy to finish his last work (just kidding).
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