[1] Organized jointly by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna and the Columbia Graphophone Company of Britain and America, the competition was originally announced on 26 June 1927 as a contest for composers from around the world to complete Schubert's Symphony in B minor, D. 759 (the Unfinished).
[citation needed] As far as the submission of individual works was concerned, in October 1927 the organizers stipulated that these should be 'in two movements, composed in the Romantic spirit that animates Schubert's music'.
Later still, a further revision of the rules stated that 'the compositions, apart from faultless formal structure, must be marked by the predominance of a vigorous melodic content, and the number of instruments employed must not substantially exceed the measure established by the classical orchestras of Schubert's time'.
[citation needed] If the 30 or so winning entries in the first stage accurately reflect the proportion of original works to completions of Schubert, it would seem that about 20 per cent, i.e., something over 100 different "finishings" of the Unfinished, were submitted.
In the 'English' zone, for example, the first prize of £150 was divided between the composer-pianist Frank Merrick (who submitted a completion of the Schubert symphony) and John St. Anthony Johnson, for a symphonic movement called Pax Vobiscum.
It had clearly not been written as an entry for the competition, but as submitted by the composer, only the somewhat smaller manuscript for Part One, consisting of three more conventional orchestral movements, was deemed eligible to be adjudged as a stand-alone work.
The chairman was Alexander Glazunov; he was assisted by Franco Alfano, Alfred Bruneau, Walter Damrosch, Carl Nielsen, Franz Schalk, Max von Schillings, and Donald Tovey.
Sources within the Columbia Graphophone company released unattributable stories to suggest that Havergal Brian's Gothic Symphony, which Donald Tovey as British delegate certainly considered a masterpiece, was also evaluated, as well as a set of symphonic variations entitled Karma by the American Charles Haubiel.
This account would square with a report in The New York Times (29 November 1928) which suggested that the jury were divided on four scores which were considered outstanding but eventually rejected as 'in a modernistic vein inappropriate to the occasion',[5] and that Atterberg's Symphony was awarded the prize as the best of the others, with (it seems) five jurors dissenting and the deadlock broken by the casting vote of Glazunov.