Unfinished work
Encyclopedia
An unfinished work is creative work
Creative work
A creative work is a tangible manifestation of creative effort such as literature, music, paintings, and software. Creative works have in common a degree of arbitrariness, such that it is improbable that two people would independently create the same work. Creative works are part of property...

 that has not been finished. Its creator may have chosen never to finish it or may have been prevented from doing so by circumstances outside of their control such as death. Such pieces are often the subject of speculation as to what the finished piece would have been like; sometimes they are finished by others and released posthumously. Unfinished works have had profound influences on their genres and have inspired others in their own projects. The term can also refer to ongoing work which could eventually be finished and is distinguishable from "incomplete work", which can be a work that was finished but is no longer in its complete form.

There are many reasons for work not being completed. Works are usually stopped when their creator dies, although some, aware of their failing health, make sure that they set up the project for completion. If the work involves other people, such as a cast of actors or the subject of a portrait, it may be halted because of their unavailability. Projects that are too grandiose might never have been finished, while others should be feasible but their creator's continual unhappiness with them leads to abandonment.

Unfinished works by popular authors and artists may still be made public, sometimes in the state they were in when work was halted. Alternatively, another artist may finish the piece. In some fields work may appear unfinished but are actually finished, such as Donatello
Donatello
Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi , also known as Donatello, was an early Renaissance Italian artist and sculptor from Florence...

's "non finito
Non finito
Non finito is a sculpting technique literally meaning that the work is unfinished. Non finito sculptures appear unfinished because the artist only sculpts part of the block, leaving the figure appearing to be stuck within the block of material. It was pioneered by Donatello during the Renaissance...

" technique in sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

.

Literature

See also: List of unpublished books by notable authors.

Many acclaimed author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

s have left work incomplete. Some such pieces have been published posthumously, either in their incomplete state or after being finished by somebody else.

It is the job of literary executor
Literary executor
A literary executor is a person with decision-making power in respect of a literary estate. According to Wills, Administration and Taxation: a practical guide "A will may appoint different executors to deal with different parts of the estate...

s to take charge of the work of a writer after their death. They must often decide what to do with incomplete work, using their own judgement if not given explicit instructions. In some cases this can lead to something happening to the work that was not originally intended, such as the release of Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...

's unfinished writings by Max Brod
Max Brod
Max Brod was a German-speaking Czech Jewish, later Israeli, author, composer, and journalist. Although he was a prolific writer in his own right, he is most famous as the friend and biographer of Franz Kafka...

 when Kafka had wished for them to be destroyed. These works have become icon
Icon
An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches...

ic in Western literature
Western literature
Western literature refers to the literature written in the languages of Europe, including the ones belonging to the Indo-European language family as well as several geographically or historically related languages such as Basque, Hungarian, and so forth...

. The posthumous publication of some of Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

's unfinished novels was met with controversy. Several books were published, but it has been suggested that it is not within the jurisdiction of Hemingway's relatives or publishers to determine whether these works should be made available to the public. For example, scholars often disapprovingly note that the version of The Garden of Eden published by Charles Scribner's Sons
Charles Scribner's Sons
Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing a number of American authors including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King, Robert A. Heinlein, Thomas Wolfe, George Santayana, John Clellon...

 in 1986, though not a revision of Hemingway's original words, nonetheless omits two-thirds of the original manuscript.

Novels can remain unfinished because the author continually rewrites the story. When enough material exists, someone else can compile and combine the work, creating a finished story out upon several different drafts. Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...

's The Mysterious Stranger
The Mysterious Stranger
The Mysterious Stranger is the final novel attempted by the American author Mark Twain. It was worked on periodically from roughly 1890 up until 1910...

was written in three different versions over a period of 20 years, none of which were completed. Twain biographer and literary executor Albert Paine combined the stories and published his version six years after Twain's death. Similarly, J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...

 continuously rewrote The Silmarillion
The Silmarillion
The Silmarillion is a collection of J. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoeic works, edited and published posthumously by his son Christopher Tolkien in 1977, with assistance from Guy Gavriel Kay, who later became a noted fantasy writer. The Silmarillion, along with J. R. R...

throughout his lifetime; a definitive version was still uncompiled at the time of his death, with some sections very fragmented. His son, Christopher Tolkien
Christopher Tolkien
Christopher Reuel Tolkien is the third and youngest son of the author J. R. R. Tolkien , and is best known as the editor of much of his father's posthumously published work. He drew the original maps for his father's The Lord of the Rings, which he signed C. J. R. T. The J...

, invited fantasy fiction writer Guy Gavriel Kay
Guy Gavriel Kay
Guy Gavriel Kay is a Canadian author of fantasy fiction. Many of his novels are set in fictional realms that resemble real places during real historical periods, such as Constantinople during the reign of Justinian I or Spain during the time of El Cid...

 to reconstruct some parts of the book, and they eventually published a final version in 1977. In 1980, Christopher Tolkien published another posthumous collection of his father's unfinished work, appropriately entitled Unfinished Tales
Unfinished Tales
Unfinished Tales is a collection of stories and essays by J. R. R. Tolkien that were never completed during his lifetime, but were edited by his son Christopher Tolkien and published in 1980.Unlike The Silmarillion, for which the narrative fragments were modified to connect into a consistent and...

. Between 1982 and 1996, he published twelve volumes of The History of Middle-earth
The History of Middle-earth
The History of Middle-earth is a 12-volume series of books published from 1983 through to 1996 that collect and analyse material relating to the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, compiled and edited by his son, Christopher Tolkien. Some of the content consists of earlier versions of already published...

, a substantial portion of which is unfinished and incomplete drafts. In 2007, Christopher Tolkien published another novel from his father entitled The Children of Húrin
The Children of Húrin
The Children of Húrin is an epic fantasy novel which forms the completion of a tale by J. R. R. Tolkien. He wrote the original version of the story in the late 1910s, revised it several times later, but did not complete it before his death in 1973...

. Like The Silmarillion, Christopher assembled the novel from various incomplete drafts.

The size of a project can be such that a piece of literature is never finished. Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...

 never completed The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at...

to the extensive length that he originally intended. Chaucer had, however, already written much of the work at the time of his death, and the Canterbury Tales are considered to be a seminal work despite the unfinished status. English poet Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...

 originally intended The Faerie Queene
The Faerie Queene
The Faerie Queene is an incomplete English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. The first half was published in 1590, and a second installment was published in 1596. The Faerie Queene is notable for its form: it was the first work written in Spenserian stanza and is one of the longest poems in the English...

to consist of 12 books; even at its unfinished state—six books were published before Spenser's death—it is the longest epic poem in the English language. Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....

, the French novelist, completed nearly 100 pieces for his novel sequence
Novel sequence
A novel sequence is a set or series of novels which share common themes, characters, or settings, but where each novel has its own title and free-standing storyline, and can thus be read independently or out of sequence.-Definitions:...

 La Comédie humaine
La Comédie humaine
La Comédie humaine is the title of Honoré de Balzac's multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories depicting French society in the period of the Restoration and the July Monarchy .-Overview:...

, but a planned 48 more were never finished. Notes and plot outlines left behind by an author may allow a successor to complete a novel or series of novels. Frank Herbert
Frank Herbert
Franklin Patrick Herbert, Jr. was a critically acclaimed and commercially successful American science fiction author. Although a short story author, he is best known for his novels, most notably Dune and its five sequels...

 left behind extensive notes related to his Dune universe
Dune universe
Dune is a science fiction franchise which originated with the 1965 novel Dune by Frank Herbert. Considered by many to be the greatest science fiction novel of all time, Dune is frequently cited as the best-selling science fiction novel in history...

, which led to son Brian Herbert
Brian Herbert
Brian Patrick Herbert is an American author who lives in Washington state. He is the elder son of science fiction author Frank Herbert....

 and science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson
Kevin J. Anderson
Kevin J. Anderson is an American science fiction author with over forty bestsellers. He has written spin-off novels for Star Wars, StarCraft, Titan A.E., and The X-Files, and with Brian Herbert is the co-author of the Dune prequels...

's completing several prequel
Prequel
A prequel is a work that supplements a previously completed one, and has an earlier time setting.The widely recognized term was a 20th-century neologism, and a portmanteau from pre- and sequel...

s to the popular series. Mervyn Peake
Mervyn Peake
Mervyn Laurence Peake was an English writer, artist, poet and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast books. They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J. R. R...

, author of the Gormenghast
Gormenghast series
The Gormenghast series comprises three novels by Mervyn Peake, featuring Castle Gormenghast, and Titus Groan, the title character of the first book.-Works in the series:...

 novels, meant to write a complete biography of the main character, Titus, but died after only completing three books in the series.

Some works are presented as separate sections, each written at different times. This can lead to the situation wherein a piece can appear complete while the author actually intended for it to continue, or where other authors try to fake their own writing as part of the work. The first four canto
Canto
The canto is a principal form of division in a long poem, especially the epic. The word comes from Italian, meaning "song" or singing. Famous examples of epic poetry which employ the canto division are Lord Byron's Don Juan, Valmiki's Ramayana , Dante's The Divine Comedy , and Ezra Pound's The...

s of Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...

's narrative poem
Narrative poetry
Narrative poetry is poetry that has a plot. The poems that make up this genre may be short or long, and the story it relates to may be simple or complex. It is usually nondramatic, with objective regular scheme and meter. Narrative poems include epics, ballads, idylls and lays.Some narrative...

 Don Juan
Don Juan (Byron)
Don Juan is a satiric poem by Lord Byron, based on the legend of Don Juan, which Byron reverses, portraying Juan not as a womanizer but as someone easily seduced by women. It is a variation on the epic form. Byron himself called it an "Epic Satire"...

were written in 1818 and 1819, with a further 12 completed and published before his death in 1824. Numerous "continuations" of the story had been published by various publishing houses even between issues of the story, along with several fake conclusions. Byron had intended to continue the story, as evidenced by the find of the 17th canto after his death, but it is not clear how long the poem would continue or how it would conclude. It is still regarded as one of his greatest achievements. Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

 was writing The Mystery of Edwin Drood
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final novel by Charles Dickens. The novel was left unfinished at the time of Dickens' death, and his intended ending for it remains unknown. Though the novel is named after the character Edwin Drood, the story focuses on Drood's uncle, choirmaster John Jasper, who...

in monthly installments when he died, completing just six of the twelve intended. The story surrounded the murder of the titular Edwin Drood; because the story was never finished, the murderer was never revealed. The book was still made into a film and a musical
The Mystery of Edwin Drood (musical)
Drood is a musical based on the unfinished Charles Dickens novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It is written by Rupert Holmes, and was the first Broadway musical with multiple endings . Holmes received Tony Awards for Best Book and Best Original Score...

, with the latter having the unusual concept of the audience voting for who they think is the murderer.

Other famous unfinished works of literature include: Hero and Leander
Hero and Leander
Hero and Leander is a Byzantine myth, relating the story of Hērō and like "hero" in English), a priestess of Aphrodite who dwelt in a tower in Sestos on the European side of the Dardanelles, and Leander , a young man from Abydos on the opposite side of the strait. Leander fell in love with Hero...

by Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. As the foremost Elizabethan tragedian, next to William Shakespeare, he is known for his blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his mysterious death.A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May...

 (a completion was provided by George Chapman
George Chapman
George Chapman was an English dramatist, translator, and poet. He was a classical scholar, and his work shows the influence of Stoicism. Chapman has been identified as the Rival Poet of Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Minto, and as an anticipator of the Metaphysical Poets...

); the second part of Dead Souls
Dead Souls
Dead Souls is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. Gogol himself saw it as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book as a "novel in verse". Despite supposedly completing the trilogy's second part, Gogol...

by Gogol; Bouvard et Pécuchet
Bouvard et Pécuchet
Bouvard et Pécuchet is an unfinished satirical work by Gustave Flaubert, published in 1881 after his death in 1880.Although conceived in 1863 as Les Deux Cloportes , and partially inspired by a short story of Barthélemy Maurice Bouvard et Pécuchet is an unfinished satirical work by Gustave...

by Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert was a French writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary , and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style.-Early life and education:Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen,...

; Weir of Hermiston
Weir of Hermiston
Weir of Hermiston is an unfinished novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. Many have considered it his masterpiece. It was cut short by Stevenson's sudden death from a cerebral hemorrhage. The novel is set in Edinburgh and the Lothians at the time of the Napoleonic Wars.-Plot summary:The novel tells the...

by Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....

; The Good Soldier Švejk
The Good Soldier Švejk
The Good Soldier Švejk , also spelled Schweik or Schwejk, is the abbreviated title of a unfinished satirical/dark comedy novel by Jaroslav Hašek. It was illustrated by Josef Lada and George Grosz after Hašek's death...

by Jaroslav Hašek
Jaroslav Hašek
Jaroslav Hašek was a Czech humorist, satirist, writer and socialist anarchist best known for his novel The Good Soldier Švejk, an unfinished collection of farcical incidents about a soldier in World War I and a satire on the ineptitude of authority figures, which has been translated into sixty...

; Suite française
Suite française (Irène Némirovsky)
Suite française is the title of a planned sequence of five novels by Irène Némirovsky, a French writer of Ukrainian Jewish origin. In July 1942, having just completed the first two of the series, Némirovsky was arrested as a Jew and detained at Pithiviers and then Auschwitz, where she allegedly...

by Irène Némirovsky
Irène Némirovsky
Irène Némirovsky was a French novelist who died at the age of 39 in Auschwitz, Nazi Germany occupied Poland. She was killed by the Nazis for being classified as a Jew under the racial laws, which did not take into account her conversion to Roman Catholicism.-Biography:Irène Némirovsky was born in...

, Answered Prayers
Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel
Answered Prayers is an unfinished novel by American author Truman Capote, published posthumously in 1986 in England and in 1987 in the United States.- History :...

by Truman Capote
Truman Capote
Truman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At...

, The Love of the Last Tycoon
The Love of the Last Tycoon
The Love of The Last Tycoon: A Western is an unfinished novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, compiled and published posthumously.-Publication history:The novel was unfinished and in rough form at the time of Fitzgerald's death at age 44...

by F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...

, Uncertain Times by Richard Yates
Richard Yates (novelist)
Richard Yates was an American novelist and short story writer, known for his exploration of mid-20th century life.-Life:...

, "Sanditon
Sanditon
Sanditon , also known as Sand and Sandition is an unfinished novel by the British novelist Jane Austen.-Background:In Sanditon, Austen explored her interest in the verbal construction of a society by means of a town – and a set of families – that is still in the process of being formed...

" by Jane Austen
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...

 and Mount Analogue
Mount Analogue
Mount Analogue can refer to:* Mount Analogue , a mountain* Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing, a novel by René Daumal...

 by René Daumal
René Daumal
René Daumal was a French spiritual para-surrealist writer and poet. He was born in Boulzicourt, Ardennes, France....

.

Science, theology and philosophy

Religious works have also been left incomplete, leading to debates about the possible missing content. Many consider that Mark's gospel, in the form which we have, is incomplete; the text after 16.8 is probably not original, thus creating speculation whether the author was arrested or died suddenly, or whether the end of the gospel could have broken away from the rest of the gospel as it was handed to the next person. The Persian Bayán
Persian Bayán
The Persian Bayán is one of the principal scriptural writings of the Báb, the founder of Bábi religion, written in Persian. The Báb also wrote a shorter book in Arabic, the Arabic Bayán.- Content:...

, a scripture
Religious text
Religious texts, also known as scripture, scriptures, holy writ, or holy books, are the texts which various religious traditions consider to be sacred, or of central importance to their religious tradition...

 from Bábism
Bábism
The Babi Faith is a religious movement that flourished in Persia from 1844 to 1852, then lingered on in exile in the Ottoman Empire as well as underground. Its founder was Siyyid `Alí Muhammad Shirazi, who took the title Báb—meaning "Gate"—from a Shi'a theological term...

, was left unfinished when the Báb
Báb
Siyyid `Alí Muḥammad Shírází was the founder of Bábism, and one of three central figures of the Bahá'í Faith. He was a merchant from Shíráz, Persia, who at the age of twenty-four claimed to be the promised Qá'im . After his declaration he took the title of Báb meaning "Gate"...

 died. There have been some claims that the text has been completed by other people, though the Báb stated that it would be finished by [him] whom God shall make manifest. St. Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, O.P. , also Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, was an Italian Dominican priest of the Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis, or Doctor Universalis...

 abandoned his great work, the Summa Theologica
Summa Theologica
The Summa Theologiæ is the best-known work of Thomas Aquinas , and although unfinished, "one of the classics of the history of philosophy and one of the most influential works of Western literature." It is intended as a manual for beginners in theology and a compendium of all of the main...

in 1273, citing a mystical experience during mass. Its arguments for the existence of God continue to exert influence in Christian theology
Christian theology
- Divisions of Christian theology :There are many methods of categorizing different approaches to Christian theology. For a historical analysis, see the main article on the History of Christian theology.- Sub-disciplines :...

 more than 700 years later.
In Greek philosophy, Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

's Critias
Critias (dialogue)
Critias, one of Plato's late dialogues, contains the story of the mighty island kingdom Atlantis and its attempt to conquer Athens, which failed due to the ordered society of the Athenians...

 was unfinished when Plato died at age 80.

The most influential document in computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

 was John von Neumann
John von Neumann
John von Neumann was a Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath who made major contributions to a vast number of fields, including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, geometry, fluid dynamics, economics and game theory, computer science, numerical analysis,...

's First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC
First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC
The First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC was an incomplete 101-page document written by John von Neumann and distributed on June 30, 1945 by Herman Goldstine, security officer on the classified ENIAC project...

, a 101-page manuscript dating from 1946. Littered with ellipticals and spaces for the eventual addition of further material, von Neumann never completed it, as by that time its distribution had already influenced an explosion in postwar computer development. Its elaboration of the stored program concept and formalisation of the logical design of computer architecture—ideas not all of which were original to von Neumann but which he first expressed in the mathematical language he favoured—endure in the architectures of modern computer systems.

Still in computer science, the seminal work on algorithms, The Art of Computer Programming
The Art of Computer Programming
The Art of Computer Programming is a comprehensive monograph written by Donald Knuth that covers many kinds of programming algorithms and their analysis....

 by Donald Knuth
Donald Knuth
Donald Ervin Knuth is a computer scientist and Professor Emeritus at Stanford University.He is the author of the seminal multi-volume work The Art of Computer Programming. Knuth has been called the "father" of the analysis of algorithms...

, has had only the first three of its seven planned volumes written.

The first genuine historigraphical
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

 work, the Peloponnesian War
Peloponnesian War
The Peloponnesian War, 431 to 404 BC, was an ancient Greek war fought by Athens and its empire against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases...

 by Thucydides
Thucydides
Thucydides was a Greek historian and author from Alimos. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC...

, was undergoing a major revision by the author at the time of his death, so different sections of it reflect a starkly contrasting general outlook on Persia
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

n influence in the events depicted.

Drawings, paintings and sculptures

Artists leave behind incomplete work for a variety of reasons. A piece may not be completed if the subject becomes unavailable, such as in the changing of a landscape or the death of a person being painted. Elizabeth Shoumatoff
Elizabeth Shoumatoff
Elizabeth Shoumatoff was an American painter who was best known for painting the Unfinished Portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt....

's Unfinished Portrait
Unfinished portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt
The Unfinished Portrait is a watercolor of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that was in progress at the time of his collapse and subsequent death. Elizabeth Shoumatoff had begun working on the portrait of the president around noon on April 12, 1945...

of 32nd U.S. president
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

 Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...

 was started around noon on 12 April 1945 but left unfinished when Roosevelt died later that day. In other instances, outside circumstances can prevent the execution of an otherwise "finished" artwork: Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...

 developed sketches and models for the 24 feet (7.3 m) "Gran Cavallo" horse statue but the bronze to cast the sculpture was diverted to make cannons. Five hundred years later, two full-size sculptures were completed based on Leonardo's work.

Depending on the medium involved, it can be difficult for another artist to complete an unfinished artwork without damaging it. Some artists did complete the paintings of their mentors, such as Giulio Romano
Giulio Romano
Giulio Romano was an Italian painter and architect. A pupil of Raphael, his stylistic deviations from high Renaissance classicism help define the 16th-century style known as Mannerism...

 is believed to have done on Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...

's Transfiguration
Transfiguration (Raphael)
The Transfiguration is considered the last painting by the Italian High Renaissance master Raphael. It was left unfinished by Raphael, and is believed to have been completed by his pupil, Giulio Romano, shortly after Raphael's death in 1520...

, and Titian
Titian
Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490 – 27 August 1576 better known as Titian was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near...

 on Giorgione
Giorgione
Giorgione was a Venetian painter of the High Renaissance in Venice, whose career was cut off by his death at a little over thirty. Giorgione is known for the elusive poetic quality of his work, though only about six surviving paintings are acknowledged for certain to be his work...

's Sleeping Venus
Sleeping Venus (Giorgione)
The Sleeping Venus, also known as the Dresden Venus, is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Giorgione, with, it is now generally accepted, the landscape and sky, by Titian, completed after Giorgione's death in 1510, as Vasari first noted...

.
Technically The Last Supper
The Last Supper (Leonardo)
The Last Supper is a 15th century mural painting in Milan created by Leonardo da Vinci for his patron Duke Ludovico Sforza and his duchess Beatrice d'Este...

 is unfinished. In most pictures it shows a roof, but at Milan, where the painting lies, it shows some Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 that is half done.
Instead of completing another artist's masterpiece, particularly when many years have passed, unfinished works frequently inspire others to create their own version. Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...

 left several unfinished sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

s and painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

s, with sketches and partially completed paintings inspiring others. If the work is to be done on commission but is not finished it is commonly passed on to another artist. Leonardo da Vinci's work on the Adoration of the Magi
Adoration of the Magi (Leonardo)
-Bibliography:-External links:******...

for the monastery of San Donato was halted when he left Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

 for Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

. Still requiring an altarpiece
Altarpiece
An altarpiece is a picture or relief representing a religious subject and suspended in a frame behind the altar of a church. The altarpiece is often made up of two or more separate panels created using a technique known as panel painting. It is then called a diptych, triptych or polyptych for two,...

, the monks employed Filippino Lippi
Filippino Lippi
Filippino Lippi was an Italian painter working during the High Renaissance in Florence, Italy.-Biography:...

 to create one. Both paintings now hang in the Uffizi
Uffizi
The Uffizi Gallery , is a museum in Florence, Italy. It is one of the oldest and most famous art museums of the Western world.-History:...

 gallery.

Paintings are usually sketched on the canvas
Canvas
Canvas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fabric used for making sails, tents, marquees, backpacks, and other items for which sturdiness is required. It is also popularly used by artists as a painting surface, typically stretched across a wooden frame...

 before work begins, and sculptures are frequently planned using a maquette
Maquette
A maquette is a small scale model or rough draft of an unfinished architectural work or a sculpture...

. These works-in-progress can be as sought after as (or even more sought after than) completed works by highly regarded artists because they help reveal the process of creating a work of art. Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Gian Lorenzo Bernini was an Italian artist who worked principally in Rome. He was the leading sculptor of his age and also a prominent architect...

, a sculptor from the Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

 period, made his bozzeti (an Italian term for the prototype sculpture) from wax
Wax
thumb|right|[[Cetyl palmitate]], a typical wax ester.Wax refers to a class of chemical compounds that are plastic near ambient temperatures. Characteristically, they melt above 45 °C to give a low viscosity liquid. Waxes are insoluble in water but soluble in organic, nonpolar solvents...

 or baked terracotta to show those that had commissioned him how the final piece was intended to look. Eleven of these bozzeti were displayed in an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...

 in 2004. Some museum
Museum
A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...

s specialise in collections of maquettes, such as the Museo dei Bozzetti in Pietrasanta
Pietrasanta
Pietrasanta is a town and comune on the coast of northern Tuscany in Italy, in the province of Lucca. Pietrasanta is part of Versilia, on the last foothills of the Apuan Alps, about 32 km north of Pisa...

, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

.

During the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

, Donatello
Donatello
Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi , also known as Donatello, was an early Renaissance Italian artist and sculptor from Florence...

 made sculptures that appeared unfinished by only sculpting part of the block, leaving the figure appearing to be stuck within the material. He called this technique "non finito
Non finito
Non finito is a sculpting technique literally meaning that the work is unfinished. Non finito sculptures appear unfinished because the artist only sculpts part of the block, leaving the figure appearing to be stuck within the block of material. It was pioneered by Donatello during the Renaissance...

", and it has been used by several artists since then.

In the age of mass media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...

, incomplete work can reach an audience due to sheer demand for material by the artist. Tintin and Alph-Art
Tintin and Alph-Art
Tintin and Alph-Art was the intended twenty-fourth and final book in the Tintin series, created by Belgian comics artist Hergé. It is a striking departure from the earlier books in tone and subject, as well as in some parts of the style; rather than being set in a usual exotic and action-packed...

, the 24th comic
Comics
Comics denotes a hybrid medium having verbal side of its vocabulary tightly tied to its visual side in order to convey narrative or information only, the latter in case of non-fiction comics, seeking synergy by using both visual and verbal side in...

 in Hergé
Hergé
Georges Prosper Remi , better known by the pen name Hergé, was a Belgian comics writer and artist. His best known and most substantial work is the 23 completed comic books in The Adventures of Tintin series, which he wrote and illustrated from 1929 until his death in 1983, although he was also...

's popular The Adventures of Tintin
The Adventures of Tintin
The Adventures of Tintin is a series of classic comic books created by Belgian artist , who wrote under the pen name of Hergé...

series, was unfinished at his death. Though he had illustrated much of the book, several sketched panels remained in the final scenes. The book was still published and the story can be followed despite the incomplete artwork.

Architecture, construction and engineering

See also: Unfinished building
Unfinished building
An unfinished building is a building where construction work was abandoned or on-hold at some stage or only exists as a design...

.

Many construction
Construction
In the fields of architecture and civil engineering, construction is a process that consists of the building or assembling of infrastructure. Far from being a single activity, large scale construction is a feat of human multitasking...

 or engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...

 projects have remained unfinished at various stages of development. The work may be finished as a blueprint
Blueprint
A blueprint is a type of paper-based reproduction usually of a technical drawing, documenting an architecture or an engineering design. More generally, the term "blueprint" has come to be used to refer to any detailed plan....

 or whiteprint
Whiteprint
Whiteprint is the commercial terminology to describe document reproduction using the diazo chemical process. It is also known as the blue-line or blue-line process...

 and never be realised, or be abandoned during construction.

There are numerous unfinished building
Unfinished building
An unfinished building is a building where construction work was abandoned or on-hold at some stage or only exists as a design...

s that remain partially constructed in countries around the world, some of which can be used in their incomplete state, with others remaining as a mere shell. An example of the latter is the Ryugyong Hotel
Ryugyong Hotel
The Ryugyong Hotel is a 105-story skyscraper under construction in Pyongyang, North Korea. Its name is also one of the historic names for Pyongyang. The building is also known as the 105 Building, a reference to its number of floors...

 in North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...

. If finished, it would become the tallest hotel in the world and the seventh largest building but is uninhabitable and will not be completed due to the cost and the poor structural integrity. Some projects are intentionally left with an unfinished appearance, particularly the follies
Folly
In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but either suggesting by its appearance some other purpose, or merely so extravagant that it transcends the normal range of garden ornaments or other class of building to which it belongs...

 of the late 16th to 18th century.

There are many reasons for construction work's being halted. Amongst others, they include a changing financial climate, unforeseen structural weaknesses, and a dramatic shift in the politics of a country. Work on the Palace of Soviets
Palace of Soviets
The Palace of the Soviets was a project to construct an administrative center and a congress hall in Moscow, Russia, near the Kremlin, on the site of the demolished Cathedral of Christ the Saviour...

, a project to construct the world's largest building in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

, was halted when the city was attacked
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...

 during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

.

Some buildings are in a cycle of near-perpetual construction, with work lasting for decades or even centuries. Antoni Gaudí
Antoni Gaudí
Antoni Gaudí i Cornet was a Spanish Catalan architect and figurehead of Catalan Modernism. Gaudí's works reflect his highly individual and distinctive style and are largely concentrated in the Catalan capital of Barcelona, notably his magnum opus, the Sagrada Família.Much of Gaudí's work was...

's Sagrada Família
Sagrada Familia
The ' , commonly known as the Sagrada Família, is a large Roman Catholic church in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, designed by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí...

 in Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

 has been under construction for around 120 years, having started in the 1880s. Work was delayed by the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

, during which the original models and parts of the building itself were destroyed. Today, even with portions of the basilica
Basilica
The Latin word basilica , was originally used to describe a Roman public building, usually located in the forum of a Roman town. Public basilicas began to appear in Hellenistic cities in the 2nd century BC.The term was also applied to buildings used for religious purposes...

 incomplete, it is still the most popular tourist destination in Barcelona with 1.5 million visitors every year. Gaudí spent 40 years of his life overseeing the project and is buried in the crypt. Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

's Cologne Cathedral
Cologne Cathedral
Cologne Cathedral is a Roman Catholic church in Cologne, Germany. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Cologne and the administration of the Archdiocese of Cologne. It is renowned monument of German Catholicism and Gothic architecture and is a World Heritage Site...

 took even longer to complete; construction started in 1248 and finished in 1880, a total of 632 years.
It is not only buildings that have failed during the construction phase. In the 1920s, the White Star Line
White Star Line
The Oceanic Steam Navigation Company or White Star Line of Boston Packets, more commonly known as the White Star Line, was a prominent British shipping company, today most famous for its ill-fated vessel, the RMS Titanic, and the World War I loss of Titanics sister ship Britannic...

 hired the shipbuilders Harland and Wolff
Harland and Wolff
Harland and Wolff Heavy Industries is a Northern Irish heavy industrial company, specialising in shipbuilding and offshore construction, located in Belfast, Northern Ireland....

 to build the first 1000 feet (304.8 m) ocean liner
Ocean liner
An ocean liner is a ship designed to transport people from one seaport to another along regular long-distance maritime routes according to a schedule. Liners may also carry cargo or mail, and may sometimes be used for other purposes .Cargo vessels running to a schedule are sometimes referred to as...

, with the planned name of Oceanic
Oceanic (unfinished ship)
Oceanic was the planned name of an unfinished ocean liner that was partially built by Harland and Wolff for the White Star Line. The ship was to have been the first -long ocean liner....

. However, a dispute between the companies and eventually the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

 halted the construction, and eventually the portion of the keel
Keel
In boats and ships, keel can refer to either of two parts: a structural element, or a hydrodynamic element. These parts overlap. As the laying down of the keel is the initial step in construction of a ship, in British and American shipbuilding traditions the construction is dated from this event...

 already constructed was broken up and used in building the smaller but similar ship, the MV Britannic. In the 1970s the Hoan Bridge
Hoan Bridge
The Daniel Hoan Memorial Bridge is a tied arch bridge that connects Interstate 794 in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to the Lake Freeway across the Milwaukee River inlet...

 in Milwaukee
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Milwaukee is the largest city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, the 28th most populous city in the United States and 39th most populous region in the United States. It is the county seat of Milwaukee County and is located on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. According to 2010 census data, the...

, Wisconsin
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...

 was out of use for five years after its construction when the connecting roads were not completed. In the 1980s, during the Iran–Iraq War, Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

i president Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...

 commissioned the Babylon project
Project Babylon
Project Babylon was a project commissioned by the Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to build a series of superguns. The design was based on research from the 1960s Project HARP led by the Canadian artillery expert Gerald Bull...

. The supergun
Supergun
A supergun is an extraordinarily large artillery piece. This size may be due to a large bore, barrel length or a combination of the two. While early examples tended to have a fairly short range more recent examples sometimes had an extremely high muzzle velocity resulting in a very long...

 design by Gerald Bull
Gerald Bull
Gerald Vincent Bull was a Canadian engineer who developed long-range artillery. He moved from project to project in his quest to launch economically a satellite using a huge artillery piece, to which end he designed the Project Babylon "supergun" for the Iraqi government...

 was never fully constructed after Bull's assassination
Assassination
To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...

 in March 1990.

Many projects do not get to the construction phase and are halted during or after planning. Ludwig II of Bavaria
Ludwig II of Bavaria
Ludwig II was King of Bavaria from 1864 until shortly before his death. He is sometimes called the Swan King and der Märchenkönig, the Fairy tale King...

 commissioned several designs for Castle Falkenstein
Castle Falkenstein
Falkenstein Castle or Castrum Pfronten is a High Middle Ages castle ruin in the Bavarian Alps, near Pfronten, a town in southern Germany. The ruin's German name is Burg Falkenstein...

, with the fourth plan being vastly different from the first. The first two designs were turned down, one because of costs and one because the design displeased Ludwig, and the third designer withdrew from the project. The fourth and final plan was completed and some infrastructure
Infrastructure
Infrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function...

 was prepared for the site, but Ludwig died before construction work began. The Palace of Whitehall
Palace of Whitehall
The Palace of Whitehall was the main residence of the English monarchs in London from 1530 until 1698 when all except Inigo Jones's 1622 Banqueting House was destroyed by fire...

, at the time the largest palace
Palace
A palace is a grand residence, especially a royal residence or the home of a head of state or some other high-ranking dignitary, such as a bishop or archbishop. The word itself is derived from the Latin name Palātium, for Palatine Hill, one of the seven hills in Rome. In many parts of Europe, the...

 in Europe, was mostly destroyed by a fire in 1698. Sir Christopher Wren
Christopher Wren
Sir Christopher Wren FRS is one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history.He used to be accorded responsibility for rebuilding 51 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including his masterpiece, St. Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, completed in 1710...

, most famous for his role in rebuilding several churches after the Great Fire of London
Great Fire of London
The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the central parts of the English city of London, from Sunday, 2 September to Wednesday, 5 September 1666. The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman City Wall...

 in 1666, sketched a proposed replacement for part of the palace, but financial constraints prevented construction.

Computer technology has allowed for 3D representations
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...

 of projects to be shown before they are built. In some cases the construction is never started and the computer model
Computer simulation
A computer simulation, a computer model, or a computational model is a computer program, or network of computers, that attempts to simulate an abstract model of a particular system...

 is the nearest that anyone will ever get to seeing the finished piece. For example, in 1999 Kent Larson's exhibition "Unbuilt Ruins: Digital Interpretations of Eight Projects by Louis I. Kahn" showed computer images of designs completed by noted architect
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

 Louis Kahn
Louis Kahn
Louis Isadore Kahn was an American architect, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. After working in various capacities for several firms in Philadelphia, he founded his own atelier in 1935...

 but never built. Computer simulations can also be used to create prototype
Prototype
A prototype is an early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.The word prototype derives from the Greek πρωτότυπον , "primitive form", neutral of πρωτότυπος , "original, primitive", from πρῶτος , "first" and τύπος ,...

s of engineering projects and test them before they are actually made; this has allowed the design process to be more successful and efficient.

Even without being constructed, many architectural designs and ideas have had a lasting influence. The Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n constructivism movement
Constructivism (art)
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th...

 started in 1913 and was taught in the Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...

 and other architecture schools, leading to numerous architects integrating it into their style.

Classical music


In the days of classical music
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...

 all compositions were sketched on manuscripts – the technology to record music did not exist. Often these manuscripts are roughly sketched, with drafting work scribbled over the top of the music, and have been found in unordered piles. Many unfinished symphonies
Unfinished symphony
An unfinished symphony is a fragment of a symphony left by composers that are considered incomplete or unfinished for various reasons. The archetypal unfinished symphony is Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 8, written in 1822, six years before his death. It features two fully orchestrated movements...

 have been pieced together from these original manuscripts by other composers, after the original author's death, with some remaining incomplete until many decades later. One of the most famous examples of unfinished musical compositions is Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...

's Symphony No. 8 in B minor
Symphony No. 8 (Schubert)
Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 8 in B minor , commonly known as the "Unfinished Symphony" , D.759, was started in 1822 but left with only two movements known to be complete, even though Schubert would live for another six years. A scherzo, nearly completed in piano score but with only two pages...

, or as it is more commonly known, The Unfinished Symphony. Another famous unfinished classical piece is Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

's Requiem
Requiem (Mozart)
The Requiem Mass in D minor by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was composed in Vienna in 1791 and left unfinished at the composer's death. A completion by Franz Xaver Süssmayr was delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg, who had anonymously commissioned the piece for a requiem Mass to commemorate the...

, famous in part because of the numerous myths and legends that surround its creation and in part because of Mozart's prestige. Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...

's Symphony No. 10
Symphony No. 10 (Mahler)
The Symphony No. 10 by Gustav Mahler was written in the summer of 1910, and was his final composition. At the time of Mahler's death the composition was substantially complete in the form of a continuous draft; but not being fully elaborated at every point, and mostly not orchestrated, it was not...

 was incomplete, with only drafts, sketches, and two mostly orchestrated movements existing at the composer's death. Several people have "completed" it with varying degrees of success, the most notable of these being Deryck Cooke
Deryck Cooke
Deryck Cooke was a British musician, musicologist and broadcaster.-Life:Cooke was born in Leicester to a poor and working class family; his father died when he was a child, but his mother was able to afford piano lessons. Cooke acquired a brilliant technique and began to compose...

's "performing version of the draft."

Some compositions are finished "in the style of" the original composer, with someone who is highly familiar with their work adopting their writing style and continuing the musical tone. Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

's The Art of Fugue
The Art of Fugue
The Art of Fugue , BWV 1080, is an incomplete work by Johann Sebastian Bach . It was most likely started at the beginning of the 1740s, if not earlier. The first known surviving version, which contained 12 fugues and 2 canons, was copied by the composer in 1745...

, which was broken off abruptly during Contrapunctus XIV by the death of the composer, was first published in the mid 18th century. Many reconstructions have been written, but in 1991 Zoltán Göncz
Zoltán Göncz
Zoltán Göncz is a Hungarian composer who often applies archaic forms and complex structures in his compositions.He graduated from the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in 1980...

 used the form of a permutation fugue to make a strong argument as to the structure of the Fugue to come. (See external links.) Sir Edward Elgar
Edward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...

 was composing a Symphony No. 3
Symphony No. 3 (Elgar)
Edward Elgar's Third Symphony was incomplete at the time of his death in 1934. Elgar left 130 pages of sketches which the British composer Anthony Payne worked on for many years, producing a complete symphony in 1997, officially known as "Edward Elgar: the sketches for Symphony No 3 elaborated by...

 at the time of his death and left 130 pages of sketches. These sketches were put into a reasonable order, orchestrated in the style of Elgar, and elaborated by Anthony Payne
Anthony Payne
Anthony Payne is an English composer, most famous for the work published as Edward Elgar: The Sketches for Symphony No. 3 Elaborated by Anthony Payne...

. Payne's reconstruction has been played numerous times to great acclaim.

Some works, deemed complete by the composer, are nonetheless augmented for non-musical reasons. In May 2000 composer Colin Matthews
Colin Matthews
Colin Matthews OBE is an English composer of classical music.-Early life and education:Matthews was born in London in 1946; his older brother is the composer David Matthews. He read classics at the University of Nottingham, and then studied composition there with Arnold Whittall, and with Nicholas...

 premiered his "completion" of Gustav Holst
Gustav Holst
Gustav Theodore Holst was an English composer. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets....

's The Planets
The Planets
The Planets, Op. 32, is a seven-movement orchestral suite by the English composer Gustav Holst, written between 1914 and 1916. Each movement of the suite is named after a planet of the Solar System and its corresponding astrological character as defined by Holst...

, whereby he composed a piece for the ninth planet Pluto
Pluto
Pluto, formal designation 134340 Pluto, is the second-most-massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the tenth-most-massive body observed directly orbiting the Sun...

, giving it the name "Pluto, The Renewer". When Holst had written the original piece Pluto had not been discovered, and this addition therefore updated the suite and completed the eight movement
Movement (music)
A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...

s that represented the planets of the solar system
Solar System
The Solar System consists of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun...

 (Earth was never included) some 80 years after it was originally performed. In August 2006 Pluto was officially demoted to a dwarf planet
Dwarf planet
A dwarf planet, as defined by the International Astronomical Union , is a celestial body orbiting the Sun that is massive enough to be spherical as a result of its own gravity but has not cleared its neighboring region of planetesimals and is not a satellite...

, meaning that Holst's original work now more accurately represents the solar system.

Some extremely famous 20th century opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

s have been left incomplete at their composers' deaths. Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...

 left the finale of Turandot
Turandot
Turandot is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.Though Puccini's first interest in the subject was based on his reading of Friedrich Schiller's adaptation of the play, his work is most nearly based on the earlier text Turandot...

unfinished and the missing music had to be provided by Franco Alfano
Franco Alfano
Franco Alfano was an Italian composer and pianist. Best known today for his opera Risurrezione and above all for having completed Puccini's opera Turandot in 1926. He had considerable success with several of his own works during his lifetime.- Biography :He was born in Posillipo, Naples...

 for the premiere in 1926. Recently, Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian composer. He is noted for his experimental work and also for his pioneering work in electronic music.-Biography:Berio was born at Oneglia Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003) was an Italian...

 composed an alternative ending. Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...

 had only finished the first two acts of his opera Lulu
Lulu (opera)
Lulu is an opera by the composer Alban Berg. The libretto was adapted by Berg himself from Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora .-Composition history:...

at the time of his death in 1935. Due to objections from his widow it was not until 1979 that a full version was performed, with music for the final act devised by Friedrich Cerha
Friedrich Cerha
Friedrich Cerha is an Austrian composer and conductor.-Biography:Cerha was born in Vienna.He received his education at the Viennese Music Academy and at the University of Vienna...

 using Berg's sketches.

Other musical works which are unfinished but performable, are simply given in their incomplete state. Schubert's symphony is the most famous, but Anton Bruckner
Anton Bruckner
Anton Bruckner was an Austrian composer known for his symphonies, masses, and motets. The first are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, complex polyphony, and considerable length...

's Ninth Symphony
Symphony No. 9 (Bruckner)
Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 9 in D minor is the last Symphony upon which he worked, leaving the last movement incomplete at the time of his death in 1896. The symphony was premiered under Ferdinand Löwe in Vienna in 1903, after Bruckner's death...

 is performed without a finale, and in Karl Amadeus Hartmann
Karl Amadeus Hartmann
Karl Amadeus Hartmann was a German composer. Some have lauded him as the greatest German symphonist of the 20th century, although he is now largely overlooked, particularly in English-speaking countries.-Life:...

's Gesangsszene
Gesangsszene
Gesangsszene is the final composition of the German composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann....

, the final words of Jean Giraudoux
Jean Giraudoux
Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux was a French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright. He is considered among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II. His work is noted for its stylistic elegance and poetic fantasy...

's text, left unset at the composer's death, are simply spoken by the soloist.

Some other well-known examples of unfinished works completed by other hands include:
  • Béla Bartók
    Béla Bartók
    Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...

    's Viola Concerto
    Viola Concerto (Bartók)
    Béla Bartók's Viola Concerto, Sz. 120, BB 128 was written in July – August 1945, in Saranac Lake, New York, while he was suffering from the terminal stages of leukemia. It was commissioned by William Primrose. Along with the Piano Concerto No. 3, it is his last work, and he left it incomplete at...

    , completed by Tibor Serly
    Tibor Serly
    Tibor Serly was a Hungarian violist, violinist and composer.He was one of the students of Zoltán Kodály. He greatly admired and became a young apprentice of Béla Bartók. His association with Bartók was for him both a blessing and a curse...

     and others
  • Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

    's Symphony No. 10
    Symphony No. 10 (Beethoven/Cooper)
    Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 10 in E flat major is a hypothetical work, assembled by Barry Cooper from Beethoven's fragmentary sketches. This title is controversial since it cannot be proved that all the sketches assembled were meant for the same piece...

    , completed by Barry Cooper
  • Alban Berg
    Alban Berg
    Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...

    's opera Lulu
    Lulu (opera)
    Lulu is an opera by the composer Alban Berg. The libretto was adapted by Berg himself from Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora .-Composition history:...

    , completed by Friedrich Cerha
    Friedrich Cerha
    Friedrich Cerha is an Austrian composer and conductor.-Biography:Cerha was born in Vienna.He received his education at the Viennese Music Academy and at the University of Vienna...

  • Alexander Borodin
    Alexander Borodin
    Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin was a Russian Romantic composer and chemist of Georgian–Russian parentage. He was a member of the group of composers called The Five , who were dedicated to producing a specifically Russian kind of art music...

    's opera Prince Igor
    Prince Igor
    Prince Igor is an opera in four acts with a prologue. It was composed by Alexander Borodin. The composer adapted the libretto from the East Slavic epic The Lay of Igor's Host, which recounts the campaign of Russian prince Igor Svyatoslavich against the invading Polovtsian tribes in 1185...

    , completed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
    Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
    Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five.The Five, also known as The Mighty Handful or The Mighty Coterie, refers to a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856–1870: Mily Balakirev , César...

     and Alexander Glazunov
    Alexander Glazunov
    Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov was a Russian composer of the late Russian Romantic period, music teacher and conductor...

  • Ernest Chausson
    Ernest Chausson
    Amédée-Ernest Chausson was a French romantic composer who died just as his career was beginning to flourish.-Life:Ernest Chausson was born in Paris into a prosperous bourgeois family...

    's String Quartet
    String Quartet (Chausson)
    The String Quartet in C minor, Op. 35, was begun by Ernest Chausson in 1898 and the composer had fully scored all but part of the third and last movement before he died in an accident in 1899...

    , completed by Vincent d'Indy
    Vincent d'Indy
    Vincent d'Indy was a French composer and teacher.-Life:Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy was born in Paris into an aristocratic family of royalist and Catholic persuasion. He had piano lessons from an early age from his paternal grandmother, who passed him on to Antoine François Marmontel and...

  • Claude Debussy
    Claude Debussy
    Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...

    's opera Rodrigue et Chimène
    Rodrigue et Chimène
    Rodrigue et Chimène is an unfinished opera in three acts by Claude Debussy. The French libretto, by Catulle Mendès, is based on the plays Las Mocedades del Cid by Guillén de Castro y Bellvís and Corneille's Le Cid which deal with the legend of El Cid...

    , completed by Edison Denisov
    Edison Denisov
    Edison Vasilievich Denisov was a Russian composer of so called "Underground" — "Anti-Collectivist", "alternative" or "nonconformist" division in the Soviet music.-Biography:...

  • Gaetano Donizetti
    Gaetano Donizetti
    Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italian composer from Bergamo, Lombardy. His best-known works are the operas L'elisir d'amore , Lucia di Lammermoor , and Don Pasquale , all in Italian, and the French operas La favorite and La fille du régiment...

    's opera Le duc d'Albe
    Le duc d'Albe
    Le duc d'Albe or Il duca d'Alba is an opera in three acts originally composed by Gaetano Donizetti in 1839 to a French language libretto by Eugène Scribe and Charles Duveyrier...

    , completed by Matteo Salvi
    Matteo Salvi
    Matteo Salvi was a composer of opera and classical music and a theatre director.Salvi was born in Botta di Sedrina , Italy...

  • Fromental Halévy
    Fromental Halévy
    Jacques-François-Fromental-Élie Halévy, usually known as Fromental Halévy , was a French composer. He is known today largely for his opera La Juive.-Early career:...

    's opera Noé
    Noé (opera)
    Noé was the last opera of the composer Fromental Halévy.The opera's libretto is by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges, who had written the book for the composer's first opera to reach performance, L'artisan...

    , completed by Georges Bizet
    Georges Bizet
    Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...

  • Charles Ives
    Charles Ives
    Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...

    ' Universe Symphony
    Universe Symphony (Ives)
    The Universe Symphony is an unfinished work by American classical music composer Charles Ives.The date of composition is unknown, but he probably worked on it periodically between 1911 and 1928...

    , completed by various composers, including Larry Austin
    Larry Austin
    Larry Austin is a United States composer noted for his electronic and computer music works. He was a co-founder and editor of the avant-garde music periodical Source: Music of the Avant Garde...

  • Gustav Mahler
    Gustav Mahler
    Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...

    's Symphony No. 10
    Symphony No. 10 (Mahler)
    The Symphony No. 10 by Gustav Mahler was written in the summer of 1910, and was his final composition. At the time of Mahler's death the composition was substantially complete in the form of a continuous draft; but not being fully elaborated at every point, and mostly not orchestrated, it was not...

    , completed by Deryck Cooke
    Deryck Cooke
    Deryck Cooke was a British musician, musicologist and broadcaster.-Life:Cooke was born in Leicester to a poor and working class family; his father died when he was a child, but his mother was able to afford piano lessons. Cooke acquired a brilliant technique and began to compose...

  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

    's Requiem
    Requiem (Mozart)
    The Requiem Mass in D minor by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was composed in Vienna in 1791 and left unfinished at the composer's death. A completion by Franz Xaver Süssmayr was delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg, who had anonymously commissioned the piece for a requiem Mass to commemorate the...

    , completed by Franz Xaver Süssmayr
    Franz Xaver Süssmayr
    Franz Xaver Süssmayr was an Austrian composer, now famous for his completion of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem.-Early life:...

  • Modest Mussorgsky
    Modest Mussorgsky
    Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was a Russian composer, one of the group known as 'The Five'. He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period...

    's opera The Fair at Sorochyntsi, completed in various versions by César Cui
    César Cui
    César Antonovich Cui was a Russian of French and Lithuanian descent. His profession was as an army officer and a teacher of fortifications; his avocational life has particular significance in the history of music, in that he was a composer and music critic; in this sideline he is known as a...

    , Nikolai Tcherepnin
    Nikolai Tcherepnin
    Nikolai Nikolayevich Tcherepnin was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. He was born in Saint Petersburg and studied under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory...

    , Vissarion Shebalin
    Vissarion Shebalin
    Vissarion Yakovlevich Shebalin was a Soviet composer.-Biography:Shebalin was born in Omsk, where his parents were school teachers. He studied in the musical college in Omsk. He was 20 years old when, following the advice of his professor, he went to Moscow to show his first compositions to...

     and Emil Cooper
    Emil Cooper
    Emil Albertovich Cooper, also known as Emil Kuper was a Russian conductor and violinist, of English ancestry....

  • Mussorgsky's opera Khovanshchina
    Khovanshchina
    Khovanshchina is an opera in five acts by Modest Mussorgsky. The work was written between 1872 and 1880 in St. Petersburg, Russia. The composer wrote the libretto based on historical sources...

    , completed in versions by Rimsky-Korsakov; Maurice Ravel
    Maurice Ravel
    Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...

     and Igor Stravinsky
    Igor Stravinsky
    Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

     working together; and Dmitri Shostakovich
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....

  • Mussorgsky's opera Zhenitba
    Zhenitba (opera)
    Zhenitba is an unfinished opera begun in 1868 by Modest Mussorgsky to his own libretto based on Nikolai Gogol's comedy Marriage. This 1842 play is a satire of courtship and cowardice, which centres around a young woman, Agafya, who is wooed by four bachelors, each with his own...

    , completed in various versions, including Rimsky-Korsakov, Aleksandr Gauk
    Aleksandr Gauk
    Aleksandr Vassilievich Gauk was a Russian/Soviet conductor and composer.Aleksandr Gauk was born in Odessa in 1893. He recalled his first experience as hearing army bands and his mother singing and accompanying herself at the piano...

    , Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov
    Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov
    Mikhail Mikhailovich Ippolitov-Ivanov was a Russian composer, conductor and teacher.- Biography :...

    , Alexander Tcherepnin
    Alexander Tcherepnin
    Alexander Nikolayevich Tcherepnin was a Russian-born composer and pianist. His father, Nikolai Tcherepnin and his son, Ivan Tcherepnin were also composers, as are two of his grandsons, Sergei and Stefan. His son Serge was involved in the roots of electronic music and instruments...

    , Gennady Rozhdestvensky
    Gennady Rozhdestvensky
    Gennady Nikolayevich Rozhdestvensky is a Russian conductor.-Biography:Rozhdestvensky was born in Moscow. His parents were the noted conductor and pedagogue Nikolai Anosov and soprano Natalya Rozhdestvenskaya...

     and Vyacheslav Nagovitsyn
    Vyacheslav Nagovitsyn
    Vyacheslav Lavrent'yevich Nagovitsin is a Russian composer born in Magnitogorsk . He was a student of Dmitri Shostakovich at the Leningrad Conservatory that he graduated in 1966 . In 1963-1964 he worked in Ulan-Ude Opera and Ballet Theater...

  • Sergei Prokofiev
    Sergei Prokofiev
    Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...

    's opera Maddalena
    Maddalena (opera)
    Maddalena is an opera in one act by the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev, who also wrote the libretto based on a play by Magda Gustavovna Lieven-Orlov under the pen-name Baron Lieven.-Origins:...

    , completed by Edward Downes
    Edward Downes
    Sir Edward Thomas "Ted" Downes, CBE was an English conductor, specialising in opera.He was associated with the Royal Opera House from 1952, and with Opera Australia from 1970. He was also well known for his long working relationship with the BBC Philharmonic and for working with the Netherlands...

  • Giacomo Puccini
    Giacomo Puccini
    Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...

    's opera Turandot
    Turandot
    Turandot is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.Though Puccini's first interest in the subject was based on his reading of Friedrich Schiller's adaptation of the play, his work is most nearly based on the earlier text Turandot...

    , completed by Franco Alfano
    Franco Alfano
    Franco Alfano was an Italian composer and pianist. Best known today for his opera Risurrezione and above all for having completed Puccini's opera Turandot in 1926. He had considerable success with several of his own works during his lifetime.- Biography :He was born in Posillipo, Naples...

     and in an alternate version by Luciano Berio
    Luciano Berio
    Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian composer. He is noted for his experimental work and also for his pioneering work in electronic music.-Biography:Berio was born at Oneglia Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003) was an Italian...

  • Puccini's opera La rondine
    La rondine
    La rondine is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Giuseppe Adami, based on a libretto by Alfred Maria Willner and Heinz Reichert...

    , completed by Lorenzo Ferrero
    Lorenzo Ferrero
    Lorenzo Ferrero is a contemporary Italian composer with a predilection for opera, a librettist, author, and book editor. He started composing at an early age and wrote over a hundred compositions thus far, including twelve operas, three ballets, and numerous orchestral, chamber music, solo...

  • Ottorino Respighi
    Ottorino Respighi
    Ottorino Respighi was an Italian composer, musicologist and conductor. He is best known for his orchestral "Roman trilogy": Fountains of Rome ; Pines of Rome ; and Roman Festivals...

    's opera Lucrezia, completed by Elsa Respighi
    Elsa Respighi
    Elsa Respighi was an Italian composer. She was the wife and former pupil of Ottorino Respighi....

  • Franz Schubert
    Franz Schubert
    Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...

    's Symphony No. 7, completed by Brian Newbould
    Brian Newbould
    Brian Newbould is a composer, conductor and author who has finished Franz Schubert's Unfinished Symphony and more symphonic works and even extra symphonies. He was educated at Gravesend Grammar School.-References:...

  • Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
    Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
    Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...

    's Piano Concerto No. 3 in E flat
    Piano Concerto No. 3 (Tchaikovsky)
    Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. post. 75, was begun as a symphony in E flat. The symphony was abandoned, only to become a single-movement Allegro brillante when published posthumously. Controversy remains, despite the composer's stated intentions, as to what...

    , completed by Sergei Taneyev
    Sergei Taneyev
    Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev , was a Russian composer, pianist, teacher of composition, music theorist and author.-Life:...

    • This work was originally intended to be a Symphony in E flat
      Symphony in E flat (Tchaikovsky)
      Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Symphony in E flat, Op. posth., was commenced after the Symphony No. 5, and was intended initially to be the composer's next symphony. Tchaikovsky abandoned this work in 1892, only to reuse much of it in the Third Piano Concerto and Andante and Finale for piano and...

      ; it would have been Tchaikovsky's 6th symphony had he not abandoned it (the work we now know as his Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Pathétique
      Symphony No. 6 (Tchaikovsky)
      The Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74, Pathétique is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's final completed symphony, written between February and the end of August 1893. The composer led the first performance in Saint Petersburg on 16/28 October of that year, nine days before his death...

       is a completely different work). Tchaikovsky converted his sketches into a piano concerto, and in that form it was completed by Taneyev. However, Semyon Bogatyrev took the original sketches and completed the symphony Tchaikovsky had first planned, publishing it as Tchaikovsky's "Symphony No. 7".
  • Carl Maria von Weber
    Carl Maria von Weber
    Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber was a German composer, conductor, pianist, guitarist and critic, one of the first significant composers of the Romantic school....

    's opera Die drei Pintos
    Die drei Pintos
    Die drei Pintos is a comic opera of which Carl Maria von Weber began composing the music, working on a libretto by Theodor Hell...

    , completed by Gustav Mahler
    Gustav Mahler
    Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...


Modern recordings

Since recording equipment has been an integral part of writing music it has been possible to use the original master tapes and demos
Demo (music)
A demo version or demo of a song is one recorded for reference rather than for release. A demo is a way for a musician to approximate their ideas on tape or disc, and provide an example of those ideas to record labels, producers or other artists...

 to construct a song from the parts that had already been completed. Many demos are released officially if the artist has been unable (or unwilling) to complete it, or made available as a bootleg recording
Bootleg recording
A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. The process of making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging...

. The continued popularity of The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...

 led to "Free as a Bird
Free as a Bird
"Free as a Bird" is a song originally composed and recorded in 1977 as a home demo by John Lennon. In 1995 a studio version of the recording incorporating contributions from Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr was released as a single by The Beatles.The single was released as part of...

" and "Real Love" being released in the mid 1990s after the band members pieced together incomplete recordings by the deceased John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...

. Both songs reached the top five in the British singles chart.

One of rock music's most famous unfinished albums is the 1967 Beach Boys album, Smile. Recorded in 1966 and 1967, Smile was to be a very ambitious followup to the acclaimed Pet Sounds
Pet Sounds
Pet Sounds is the eleventh studio album by the American rock band The Beach Boys, released May 16, 1966, on Capitol Records. It has since been recognized as one of the most influential records in the history of popular music and one of the best albums of the 1960s, including songs such as "Wouldn't...

album, but due to Brian Wilson
Brian Wilson
Brian Douglas Wilson is an American musician, best known as the leader and chief songwriter of the group The Beach Boys. Within the band, Wilson played bass and keyboards, also providing part-time lead vocals and, more often, backing vocals, harmonizing in falsetto with the group...

's deteriorating mental health and increased friction among band members, The Beach Boys abandoned the project after completing numerous recordings slated for the project. In 2004, Brian Wilson and writing partner Van Dyke Parks
Van Dyke Parks
Van Dyke Parks is an American composer, arranger, producer, musician, singer, author and actor. Parks is perhaps best known for his contributions as a lyricist on the Beach Boys album Smile....

 went into the studio, and newly recorded the material and released it as a completed solo album.

Another famous unfinished rock album is Jimi Hendrix's First Rays of the New Rising Sun
First Rays of the New Rising Sun
First Rays of the New Rising Sun is a "concept compilation" attempting to recreate the album Jimi Hendrix was working on at the time of his death in 1970, as closely as is feasible to how he would have wanted it...

. Due to his untimely death at the age of 27, Hendrix was unable to complete the album. It has been issued in various posthumous forms in the ensuing years.

Several artists have found that some of their studio work has been leaked onto the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 before their album has been completed. System of a Down
System of a Down
System of a Down, also known by the acronym SOAD and often shortened to System, is a rock band from Southern California. The band was formed in 1994. It consists of Serj Tankian , Daron Malakian , Shavo Odadjian and John Dolmayan...

's 2002 follow-up to Toxicity
Toxicity (album)
Toxicity is the second album by American heavy metal band System of a Down. Produced by Rick Rubin, Toxicity was released on September 4, 2001 by American Recordings, debuting at #1 on both the United States, with 220,000 copies, and #1 on the Canadian charts...

, untitled at the time, was leaked onto the Internet as MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...

 files. When the album was released under the title Steal This Album!
Steal This Album!
Steal This Album! is the third studio album by American heavy metal band System of a Down, released on November 26, 2002, on American Recordings...

the songs were significantly different from the work-in-progress, with different titles, lyrics and even melodies. There were some reports that the changes were a direct result of negative feedback about the leaked material.

Some artists will try to ensure that their work is completed (as much as possible) before their health prevents them from continuing. Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash
John R. "Johnny" Cash was an American singer-songwriter, actor, and author, who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century...

, aware of his failing health, made sure that he recorded the vocals for 60 more songs, with the music being completed after his death. These songs were compiled by producer Rick Rubin
Rick Rubin
Frederick Jay "Rick" Rubin is an American record producer and the co-president of Columbia Records. Along with Russell Simmons, Rubin was the co-founder of Def Jam Records and also established American Recordings...

 and released as American V: A Hundred Highways
American V: A Hundred Highways
-Track listing:#"Help Me" – 2:51#:Previously recorded by Kris Kristofferson for Jesus Was a Capricorn #"God's Gonna Cut You Down" – 2:38...

and American VI. However, not all artists get the chance to complete their work before their death, and the recordings that are made public may be somewhat different from what had originally been intended. From a Basement on the Hill
From a Basement on the Hill
From a Basement on the Hill is the sixth and final studio album by the late singer-songwriter Elliott Smith. Released posthumously on October 19, 2004 by ANTI- Records in CD, double LP, and digital download, it peaked at #19 in the US and #41 in the UK....

by Elliott Smith
Elliott Smith
Steven Paul "Elliott" Smith was an American singer-songwriter and musician. Smith was born in Omaha, Nebraska, raised primarily in Texas, and resided for a significant portion of his life in Portland, Oregon, where he first gained popularity...

 was released posthumously in 2004 with comments from the initial album producer saying that "[t]he record he would have delivered would [have] had more songs, would have had different mixes and [been] a little more in your face". The album was still well-received by critics.

Richard Carpenter
Richard Carpenter (musician)
Richard Lynn Carpenter is an American pop musician, best known as one half of the brother/sister duo The Carpenters, along with his sister Karen Carpenter. He was a producer, arranger, pianist and keyboardist, and occasional lyricist, as well as joining with Karen on harmony...

 released several tracks decades after his sister Karen died in 1983, leaving a multitude of unfinished work. One track, released on the "Interpretations" album in the mid-nineties, included Karen's lead vocal for the song "Trying To Get The Feeling Again" which had previously been recorded and released by Barry Manilow
Barry Manilow
Barry Manilow is an American singer-songwriter, musician, arranger, producer, conductor, and performer, best known for such recordings as "Could It Be Magic", "Mandy", "Can't Smile Without You", and "Copacabana ."...

. The lead had been lost for years on a mislabelled tape. Strings, piano, and backup singers were added to the sound of Karen's lead vocal, while Richard left the sound of her turning the lead sheet over in the finished product. Another track was Karen's cover "The Rainbow Connection
The Rainbow Connection
"Rainbow Connection" is a popular song written by Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher and originally performed by the character of Kermit the Frog in The Muppet Movie in 1979...

", which had been written by Kenny Ascher and Paul Williams
Paul Williams (songwriter)
Paul Hamilton Williams, Jr. is an Academy Award-winning American composer, musician, songwriter, and actor. He is perhaps best known for popular songs performed by a number of acts in the 1970s including Three Dog Night's "An Old Fashioned Love Song", Helen Reddy's "You and Me Against the World",...

 for Jim Henson
Jim Henson
James Maury "Jim" Henson was an American puppeteer best known as the creator of The Muppets. As a puppeteer, Henson performed in various television programs, such as Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, films such as The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper, and created advanced puppets for...

 to sing as Kermit The Frog
Kermit the Frog
Kermit the Frog is puppeteer Jim Henson's most famous Muppet creation, first introduced in 1955. He is the protagonist of many Muppet projects, most notably as the host of The Muppet Show, and has appeared in various sketches on Sesame Street, in commercials and in public service announcements over...

 in The Muppet Movie
The Muppet Movie
The Muppet Movie is the first of a series of live-action musical feature films starring Jim Henson's Muppets. Released in 1979, the film was produced by Henson Associates, Children's Television Workshop and ITC Entertainment....

(1979). Recording it only a year later, Richard claims that Karen just didn't like the song and that was why it was omitted from their 1981 album, Made In America. A toy piano, choir, and strings were added against Karen's vocals. The song was released in 2001 on the album "As Time Goes By".

Film

Film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

s may not be completed for several reasons, with some being shelved
Shelved
In politics, the term can be used for policy drafts, that have never been officially brought into legislation.In the film industry, a film is considered shelved if it is not released for public viewing after filming has started, or even completed....

 during different stages of the production. Arrive Alive
Arrive Alive
Arrive Alive is the title of an unfinished comedy film starring Willem Dafoe and Joan Cusack, directed by Jeremiah S. Chechik and produced by Art Linson.The story concerns a hotel manager and his girlfriend involved in various scams...

was scrapped after a week of filming when the comedy was not living up to the screenplay. Shelving a film without it ever being released can be very expensive for the studios, with Arrive Alive costing $7 million.

With so many people involved in filmmaking
Filmmaking
Filmmaking is the process of making a film, from an initial story, idea, or commission, through scriptwriting, casting, shooting, directing, editing, and screening the finished product before an audience that may result in a theatrical release or television program...

 it is very possible for a film to remain incomplete because of an injury or death. While a member of the crew (even a producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...

 or director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

) can often be replaced, it is much more difficult to change to a different actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

 if many of the scenes have already been filmed. For example, Dark Blood
Dark Blood
Dark Blood is an unfinished 1993 film directed by George Sluizer, written by Jim Barton, and starring River Phoenix, Jonathan Pryce, and Judy Davis. In 2011, it was announced that director George Sluizer plans to release the film in 2012...

was cancelled halfway through filming due to the death of its star River Phoenix
River Phoenix
River Jude Phoenix was an American film actor, musician, and teen icon. He was the oldest brother of fellow actors Rain, Joaquin, Liberty, and Summer Phoenix.Phoenix began acting at age 10 in television commercials...

; however, the film will finally be released as early as 2012 after 18 years of editing by its director. Some films have been completed despite such problems. A famous example is Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee was a Chinese American, Hong Kong actor, martial arts instructor, philosopher, film director, film producer, screenwriter, and founder of the Jeet Kune Do martial arts movement...

's Game of Death
Game of Death
The Game of Death is a 1972 film starring Bruce Lee. It was almost the last film Bruce Lee had planned to be the demonstration piece of his martial art Jeet Kune Do. Over 100 minutes of footage was shot before his death, some of which was later misplaced in the Golden Harvest archives...

; Lee died during the filming and the rest of the filming was finished by Tai Chung Kim
Tai Chung Kim
Kim Tai Chung , also known as Kim Tai Jong or Tong Lung , was a Korean born taekwondo practitioner martial artist actor and businessman...

, a Lee lookalike and Yuen Biao
Yuen Biao
Yuen Biao is a Hong Kong actor, martial artist. He specialises in acrobatics and Chinese martial arts and has worked on over 80 films as actor, stuntman and action choreographer...

, a then-stunt actor who later became a TV/movie actor. His son, Brandon Lee
Brandon Lee
Brandon Bruce Lee was an American actor and martial artist. He was the son of martial arts film star Bruce Lee...

 also suffered from the same fate: he died after filming most of The Crow
The Crow (film)
The Crow is a 1994 American action film based on the 1989 comic book of the same name by James O'Barr. The film was written by David J. Schow and John Shirley, and directed by Alex Proyas...

, but the remaining scenes were played by stunt double
Stunt double
A stunt double is a type of body double, specifically a skilled replacement used for dangerous film or video sequences, in movies and television , and for other sophisticated stunts...

 Chad Stahelski with Lee's face digitally composited onto the double.

Continued delays can prevent a film from ever being completed. Something's Got to Give
Something's Got to Give
Something's Got to Give is an unfinished 1962 American feature film, directed by George Cukor and starring Marilyn Monroe, Dean Martin and Cyd Charisse...

was a 1962 film
1962 in film
The year 1962 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*May - The Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards are officially founded by the Taiwanese government....

 with a difficult production history, which included the firing of leading lady Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....

. She was later rehired but died before filming started; without the delay the film might have been completed.

In Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...

' lifetime his unfinished films became legendary. For decades he worked on a version of Don Quixote
Don Quixote (unfinished film)
Don Quixote is an unfinished film project directed and produced between 1955 and 1969 by Orson Welles.-Television project:Don Quixote was initially conceived as a 30-minute film for CBS. Rather than offer a literal adaptation of the Miguel de Cervantes novel, Welles opted to bring the characters...

, and he claimed that the film could be finished despite the deaths of his two leading actors. Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...

remains one of the only films that was released as Welles intended, with most of his other films remaining incomplete or being changed by the studios. His death on 10 October 1985 came while he was working on The Other Side of the Wind
The Other Side of the Wind
The Other Side of the Wind is an unfinished film directed by Orson Welles, shot between 1969 and 1976, and starring John Huston, Bob Random, Peter Bogdanovich, Susan Strasberg and Oja Kodar.-Summary:...

and The Dreamers
The Dreamers (unfinished film)
The Dreamers is an unfinished and unreleased film project directed and produced between 1980 and 1982 by Orson Welles.-Production history:...

, the former being nearly completed.

Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...

 also had a famous unfinished film, Napoleon. Reputedly, he wanted Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson
John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times, and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the...

 to play the famous Emperor after seeing him in Easy Rider
Easy Rider
Easy Rider is a 1969 American road movie written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper. It tells the story of two bikers who travel through the American Southwest and South with the aim of achieving freedom...

. However, it never got made, due to budgetary constraints and the box office failure
Box office bomb
The phrase box office bomb refers to a film for which the production and marketing costs greatly exceeded the revenue regained by the movie studio. This should not be confused with Hollywood accounting when official figures show large losses, yet the movie is a financial success.A film's financial...

 of Sergei Bondarchuk
Sergei Bondarchuk
Sergei Fedorovich Bondarchuk was a Soviet film director, screenwriter, and actor.- Biography :Born in Belozerka, in the Kherson Governorate, Sergei Bondarchuk spent his childhood in the cities of Yeysk and Taganrog, graduating from the Taganrog School Number 4 in 1938. His first performance as an...

’s Waterloo. He eventually used his research on Napoleon to make Barry Lyndon
Barry Lyndon
Barry Lyndon is a 1975 British-American period romantic war film produced, written, and directed by Stanley Kubrick based on the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray which recounts the exploits of an 18th century Irish adventurer...

, regarded by many to be his most personal film.

It is not only live-action films that can be problematic
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...

. The Thief and the Cobbler
The Thief and the Cobbler
The Thief and the Cobbler is an animated feature film, famous for its animation and its long, troubled history. The film was conceived by Canadian animator Richard Williams, who worked 28 years on the project. Beginning production in 1964, Williams intended The Thief and the Cobbler to be his...

was a twenty-six-year animated film
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...

 project by Richard Williams which was taken away from him and completed by Fred Calvert. The workprint
Workprint
A workprint is a rough version of a motion picture, used by the film editor during the editing process. Such copies generally contain original recorded sound that will later be re-dubbed, stock footage as placeholders for missing shots or special effects, and animation tests for in-production...

 of the original film became available as a bootleg. The 1978 animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings (1978 film)
J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is a 1978 American fantasy film directed by Ralph Bakshi. It contains both animation and live action footage which is rotoscoped to give it a more consistent look throughout the length of the movie. It is an adaptation of the first half of the high fantasy...

was not viewed by the studio as enough of a commercial success to warrant the funding of a sequel, thus not completing the story from the original trilogy of books.

Software

Computer software, particularly games
Computer and video games
A video game is an electronic game that involves human interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device. The word video in video game traditionally referred to a raster display device, but following popularization of the term "video game", it now implies any type of...

, are sometimes cancelled quite far into their development
Software engineering
Software Engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software, and the study of these approaches; that is, the application of engineering to software...

. Occasionally they are demonstrated to the press so that preview
PREview
PREview is a requirements method which focuses on the early stage of Requirements Engineering: discovering and documenting requirements. PREview uses a Viewpoint-Oriented Approach to enable the conversion of top-level goals into requirements and constraints...

s can be written but are never completed or published. Amen: The Awakening
Amen: The Awakening
Amen: The Awakening was a narrative driven first-person shooter/computer role-playing game with some stealth elements by Cavedog Entertainment. It was to be the first FPS by Cavedog...

had an extensive preview written in the magazine PC Paradox in 1999, including numerous screenshot
Screenshot
A screenshot , screen capture , screen dump, screengrab , or print screen is an image taken by a computer to record the visible items displayed on the monitor, television, or another visual output device...

s, which generated a lot of interest in the project. However, it was cancelled the following year. Due to continued interest in a game, some are eventually made available in their unfinished state. Combat 2
Combat 2
Combat 2 is video game for the Atari 2600. Originally announced in 1982, it was subsequently cancelled. Developed by Atari, the game was supposed to be the sequel to the classic Atari VCS game Combat, which was bundled with the system...

, the sequel to the 1977 Atari VCS
Atari 2600
The Atari 2600 is a video game console released in October 1977 by Atari, Inc. It is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in...

-bundled game Combat
Combat (video game)
Combat is an early video game by Atari for the Atari 2600. It was released as one of the nine launch titles for the system in October 1977, and was included in the box with the system from its introduction until 1982...

, was never completed but, many years later at the 2001 Classic Gaming Expo, 200 copies of the unfinished game were sold after a company created a box and manual.

Software undergoes a testing phase
Software testing
Software testing is an investigation conducted to provide stakeholders with information about the quality of the product or service under test. Software testing can also provide an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to appreciate and understand the risks of software...

 that helps to eliminate problems before it is released; however, beta testing
Development stage
A software release life cycle refers to the phases of development and maturity for a piece of computer software—ranging from its initial development, to its eventual release, and updated versions of the released version to help improve software or fix bugs still present in the software.- Pre-alpha...

 is a form of testing where the software is open to the public (usually limited to a set number of people or organisations) but is still essentially unfinished. This is often an important part of the development of a software package.

If a piece of software is becoming overly delayed the developer may just release the program despite the presence of a few bugs
Software bug
A software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's...

. The Internet has allowed patch
Patch (computing)
A patch is a piece of software designed to fix problems with, or update a computer program or its supporting data. This includes fixing security vulnerabilities and other bugs, and improving the usability or performance...

es to be deployed that fix these bugs, but before such technology was available the problems could not be fixed after the game was published. Even with this, a game with too many bugs when it is made public will receive very poor reviews that will undoubtedly affect sales. For example, 2002's Destroyer Command
Destroyer Command
Destroyer Command is a naval simulation released by Ubisoft in 2002 and developed by the now-defunct Ultimation Inc. The game placed the player in command of a destroyer during World War II, featuring campaigns from both the Pacific War and the Battle of the Atlantic. Customized missions may be...

received some very positive reviews about many aspects of the game but was criticised for the number of glitches it contained that, given a lengthier software testing phase, should have been fixed. Some developers choose to disable certain features in order to release the game on time, especially if a project has seen an amount of feature creep. One such title was Cinemaware
Cinemaware
Cinemaware was a computer game developer and publisher that released several popular titles in the 1980s based on various movie themes. The company was resurrected in 2000, before being acquired by eGames in 2005.-Cinemaware Corp...

's Defender of the Crown
Defender of the Crown
Defender of the Crown is a strategy computer game designed by Kellyn Beck. It was Cinemaware's first game, and was originally released for the Commodore Amiga in 1986, setting a new standard for graphic quality in home computer games....

, which was released before all the features were completed when the company was faced with a strict deadline and the loss of two programers.

Unfinished work and the law

Unfinished work is often covered by the copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...

 laws of the country of origin. The United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 have taken the step of creating a law which specifically mentions ongoing work, whereby work which is in progress but will in the future be completed can be covered by copyright. On 27 April 2005 the "Artist's Rights and Theft Prevention Act", a subpart of the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act
Family Entertainment and Copyright Act
The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act is a federal legislative act regarding copyright that became law in the United States in 2005. The Act consists of two subparts: the Artist's Rights and Theft Prevention Act of 2005, which increases penalties for copyright infringement, and the Family...

, was signed into U.S. law. This act allows for organisations or individuals to apply for copyright protection on unfinished commercial products, such as software, films, and other visual or audible media. For example, a photographer can preregister a photograph by giving a written description of what the final piece (or collection thereof) will look like before the work is finished.

In copyright law, an artistic creation that includes major, basic copyrighted aspects of an original, previously created first work is known as a 'derivative work
Derivative work
In United States copyright law, a derivative work is an expressive creation that includes major, copyright-protected elements of an original, previously created first work .-Definition:...

'. This holds for all kinds of work, including those that have never officially been published. The rights of the first work's originator must be granted to the secondary work for it to be rightfully called a 'derivative work'. If no copyright permission is granted from the originator, it is instead called a 'copy'. Upon completion of the new piece both parties hold a joint copyright status, with both having to agree to any publications. When the copyright has lapsed for the original work the second artist fully owns the copyright for their work, but cannot stop distribution of the original piece or another artist from completing the work in their own way. However, such copyrights can only be granted if the work shows significant new creative content.

See also

  • Lacuna
    Lacuna (manuscripts)
    A lacunaPlural lacunae. From Latin lacūna , diminutive form of lacus . is a gap in a manuscript, inscription, text, painting, or a musical work...

     – a gap in a manuscript
    Manuscript
    A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...

    , inscription, text, or a musical work.
  • Shared universe
    Shared universe
    A shared universe is a fictional universe to which more than one writer contributes. Work set in a shared universe share characters and other elements with varying degrees of consistency. Shared universes are contrasted with collaborative writing, in which multiple authors work on a single story....

     – a literary technique
    Literary technique
    A literary technique is any element or the entirety of elements a writer intentionally uses in the structure of their work...

     whereby a series can continue after the death of the original author.
  • Tower of Babel
    Tower of Babel
    The Tower of Babel , according to the Book of Genesis, was an enormous tower built in the plain of Shinar .According to the biblical account, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar, where...

     – a tower mentioned in Genesis in the Bible
    Bible
    The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

     where God
    God
    God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

     halted the construction.
  • List of comics that were never published
  • Lost work
    Lost work
    A lost work is a document or literary work produced some time in the past of which no surviving copies are known to exist. Works may be lost to history either through the destruction of the original manuscript, or through the non-survival of any copies of the work. Deliberate destruction of works...


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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