ABSTRACT
Interesting rhythmic and metric properties have not gone unnoticed in some of Schubert’s compositions, but those of the “Unfinished” Symphony in B Minor have received little concentrated inquiry. So often in Schubert’s works the. “subject of enunciation” is the deeply interior, personal experience of an individual subject, rather than exterior events, deeds, or appearances in the social world. Schubert’s symphonic expression of individual subjectivity might have long remained an entirely private one, had not Johann Herbeck rescued the manuscript from the obscurity of Anselm Hüttenbrenner’s library and produced its first performance. When Schubert repeats the motto elsewhere in the movement, he either alters the motto itself or adjusts its accompaniment in order to reinforce strictly duple hypermeter. By lending musical Bewegung a subtle and profoundly internal dimension hitherto rare in symphonic music, especially in first movements, Schubert not only gave symphonic expression to an individual lyric subjectivity, but also located that subjectivity in the body of the responsive listener.
