Symphony No.7 in E major (Schubert)

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Schubert drafted a four-movement symphony in E major (D 729) in August 1821 but, though the work (which comprises 1340 bars) is structurally complete, he only orchestrated the slow introduction and the first 110 bars of the first movement. The rest of the work is however continued on 14-stave score pages as a melodic line with occasional basses or counterpoints, giving clues as to changes in orchestral texture. The movements are:

• Adagio - Allegro
• Andante
• Scherzo and Trio
• Allegro giusto

Schubert seems to have laid the symphony aside in order to work on his opera Alfonso und Estrella, and never returned to it. The manuscript was given by Schubert's brother Ferdinand to Felix Mendelssohn and was subsequently acquired by Sir George Grove, who bequeathed it to the Royal College of Music in London. There are at least three completions - by John Francis Barnett (1881), Felix Weingartner (1934) and Brian Newbould (1981). The work is now generally accepted to be Schubert's Seventh Symphony, an appellation which some scholars had preferred to leave for the chimerical 'Gastein Symphony' that was long believed to have been written and lost in 1824.