Why didn't Schubert complete his setting of Goethe's "Gretchens Bitte" (D. 564) (Gretchen's Prayer), from the poet's Faust? He had already set Gretchen am Spinnrade and Szene aus Goethe's "Faust" masterfully in 1815, surely he had the ability to compose an equally masterful Gretchen in 1817. But after setting five of Goethe's eight verses magnificently and movingly, he broke off his work before he reached the climax of the piece in the final verse and never returned to it again.

The first three verses of Goethe's poem are apparently a prayer that Gretchen knows and knows well, and Schubert's soulfully sympathetic setting is in heartrending B flat minor. When Gretchen's prayer becomes personal in the fourth verse, however, Schubert's music becomes even more anguished; the vocal line ascends up from the singer's lower ranges, the piano accompaniment becomes more active, and the harmonic tension increases as Schubert modulates upward. But at the climax of the fifth verse, when Gretchen realizes the hopelessness of her situation, the vocal lines sink downward and the modulations cease. And so does Schubert's Gretchen.

Did Schubert stop because he could not think of how to end the song? That seems utterly unlikely. Did he stop because he could not bear to think of how to end the story of this battered, beaten, bruised, and broken woman? Although that seems more likely, it will never be known. In 1943, however, English composer and avid Schubertian Benjamin Britten took it upon himself to finish Gretchen. Although Britten's completion is cleverly concocted from materials already presented in the earlier verses of the song, and many critics and scholars have accepted his completion as a worthy fulfillment of the song, it's hard to endorse it. Britten's additions—although masterfully done—are all-too-obvious and all-too-obviously not on the same level of sublime inspiration as the rest of the song.

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