Stephen’s sermon on our lives being ‘works in progress’ got me thinking about unfinished music. The usual reason for a piece of music being unfinished is the death of the composer; thus Mozart’s ‘Requiem‘ was never completed because he died in 1791 before it was finished (somewhat ironically, some felt, since a requiem mass is usually played at someone’s funeral); Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ symphony (No. 8) has only 2 movements instead of the usual 4 (although in this case, the work was simply not completed, Schubert living another six years after he began work on it!)
In music itself, however, there are ‘endings’ which don’t really seem like endings. Music traditionally finishes with the IV V I cadence, the subdominant chord followed by the dominant chord which is then completed by the tonic chord, giving the music a sense of ‘home’, and thus completion. If a song ends on the dominant chord (V) instead, this is known as an ‘imperfect cadence’, because our ears expect another chord to give us a sense of ‘finish’:
‘Keep The Faith’ by Tim Hughes does not have a ‘finished’ ending. The chords ‘hang’, sounding incomplete. The song talks about us keeping the faith and overcoming through God’s love and power, but I like to think it ends this way because, as Stephen reminded us, our lives are still works in progress. God hasn’t finished with us yet. He’s still writing the melodies and harmonies of our lives. He’s still working on us. One day, these tunes will be complete, but in the meantime,
‘Life is a song we must sing with our days
A poem with meaning more than words can say
A painting with colours no rainbow can tell
A lyric that rhymes either heaven or hell.’ (Michael Card, ‘The Poem of Your Life‘)