Discussion prompt for tonight’s open post:  When is something a complete (if small) work of art, and when is it unfinished?

Glibs of a certain age may be familiar (or at least have heard of) Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony

 

Now if you listen to it, it doesn’t just end mid-phrase or even mid-movement.  It’s unfinished in the sense that the symphony form typically has four movements whereas Schubert’s 8th has only three.  And furthermore, we know that this wasn’t some novel form Franzi was writing, he did intend to eventually get around and write a fourth movement — he just had higher priorities.

But not all short music is incomplete, some of it is just a miniature example of the form, like so:

 

Here we have a strophic form with only two verses, but I’d say it’s a complete work. You could say it’s really just the same verse twice and in that verse literally nothing happens. It’s just a guy at a coffee shop who sees a hottie.  The lyrics parallelize both halves of the verse, then he closes it out with a last repeat of the chorus.

Contrast with this:

 

This is also a two-verse song, but it’s incomplete — verses are missing.  In this song, there actually is a narrative progression. The first verse establishes that the character is experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations and implies that they are possibly schizoid or DID. The chorus confirms that this has happened before and that the person has at least some sort of treatment/learned tricks as to how to deal with it. The second verse shows that there is a change happening — time is going by (the weather is changing) and there is another personality trying to reassert themselves. And in the third verse… there is no third verse. All setup, no payoff. Instead of a third verse we just get an instrumental version of the verse and chorus (they knew it needed padding? There was a third verse but the label made them delete it?).

 

Anyway, talk amongst themselves.