Curse of the ninth

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The curse of the ninth is the superstition that any composer of symphonies, from Beethoven onwards, will die soon after writing their own Ninth Symphony. Most prominent examples, besides Beethoven, are Franz Schubert, Antonín Dvořák, Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler.

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[edit] Beginnings

According to Arnold Schoenberg, this superstition began with Gustav Mahler, who, after writing his Eighth Symphony, wrote Das Lied von der Erde: Eine Symphonie für Tenor-Stimme, Contralt -Stimme und große Orchester (nach Hans Bethges "Die chinesische Flöte"). Then he wrote his Symphony No. 9 and thought he had beaten the curse, but died with his Tenth Symphony incomplete.

From Mahler's point of view, the only two victims of this curse had been Beethoven and Bruckner. Franz Schubert's Great C major Symphony would have been called No. 7 in Mahler's time,[1] and Dvořák considered the score of his early C minor Symphony lost. Bruckner was superstitious about his own Ninth Symphony, not because of the curse of the ninth, but because it was in the same key as Beethoven's Ninth. (Bruckner considered his F minor Symphony just a school exercise, and the D minor Symphony now known as No. 0 he declared invalid).

In an essay about Mahler, Schoenberg wrote: "It seems that the ninth is a limit. He who wants to go beyond it must pass away. It seems as if something might be imparted to us in the Tenth which we ought not yet to know, for which we are not ready. Those who have written a Ninth stood too close to the hereafter."

[edit] Others

After Mahler, some composers used as examples of the curse include: Kurt Atterberg, Alfred Schnittke, Roger Sessions, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Egon Wellesz and Malcolm Arnold. Schnittke wrote his Ninth and last symphony with his left hand while virtually paralysed and unable to speak from a series of strokes; the authenticity of the work finally performed as an interpretation of his manuscript is problematic. In any case a "Symphony No. 0" by Schnittke has been performed and recorded, so his total should be ten. Alexander Glazunov completed the first movement of his Ninth but worked on it no further for the 26 more years he lived.

Dmitri Shostakovich, whose music was strongly influenced by Mahler, felt under pressure to write a momentous Ninth symphony, to be the equal of Beethoven's. Recoiling against the idea, he produced a relatively lightweight piece, quite unlike his other works of the time. According to Testimony, Shostakovich was expected "to write a majestic Ninth Symphony ... [with] quadruple winds, choir and soloists to hail the leader. All the more because Stalin found the number auspicious: the Ninth Symphony."[2] But when it was played, "Stalin was incensed. He was deeply offended, because there was no chorus, no soloists. And no apotheosis. There wasn't even a paltry dedication.[3] Stalin wasn't the only one displeased, the work "caused consternation in official circles for failing to be a grandiose hymn extolling Soviet victory over the Germans."[4] In the third movement he even quotes phrases from both Beethoven and Mahler's Ninths (given to the bassoon in somewhat ironic fashion). The work ends in a playful, mischievous mood. Effectively ending the "curse of the ninth", Shostakovich was the first great symphonist to compose more than nine symphonies since Haydn and Mozart, and ultimately went on to complete fifteen symphonies in total.

[edit] Counter examples

Besides Shostakovich, some other counterexamples are: Hans Werner Henze (10; his ninth symphony was actually choral), Eduard Tubin (10, died writing his eleventh symphony), William Schuman (10; his first two were withdrawn), David Diamond (11), Edmund Rubbra (11; his ninth symphony was choral), Robert Simpson (11; his planned final 12th symphony was to be choral), Heitor Villa-Lobos and Darius Milhaud (12 each), Vagn Holmboe (13, as well as four additional symphonies for strings alone), Roy Harris (13; he was more superstitious about the number 13 than the number 9, and so labelled his 13th as 14th), Glenn Branca (14, although Branca's definition of "symphony" is somewhat untraditional), Gloria Coates (15, although she only recognized and numbered her first six symphonies as "symphonies" after completing her 7th), Rued Langgaard (16 plus an unnumbered choral symphony, Sinfonia Interna), Henry Cowell (17), Allan Pettersson (17), Moisei Vainberg (22), Nikolai Myaskovsky (27), Havergal Brian (32), Alan Hovhaness (63), and Leif Segerstam (193).

Composers before Beethoven, like Joseph Haydn (104) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (41), are not considered relevant to this superstition.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Stephen Johnson, "Mahler" in Layton, Robert, editor. (1995) A Guide To The Symphony (Oxford): Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-1928-8005-5. pp. 180 - 181. Johnson compares a climactic dissonance in Mahler's Tenth to similar moments in Schubert's and Bruckner's Ninths. "At the time Mahler began his Tenth Symphony, the Bruckner [Ninth] was available only in a bowdlerised version by Ferdinand Löwe in which that culminating discord was cleaned up, but given Mahler's involvement with Bruckner, it is likely that he had seen the original." Johnson is also fairly sure Mahler knew nothing about Schubert's Tenth.
  2. ^ Solomon Volkov, Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, translated to English by Antonina W. Bouis. New York: Limelight Editions (1979): 140
  3. ^ Solomon Volkov, Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, translated to English by Antonina W. Bouis. New York: Limelight Editions (1979): 141
  4. ^ Elizabeth Wilson, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered. Princeton: Princeton University Press (1994): 175
  • Cooke, Deryck. Gustav Mahler: An Introduction to His Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
  • Lebrecht, Norman. Mahler Remembered. New York: W.W. Norton, 1987.
  • Mahler-Werfel, Alma. The Diaries, translated by Antony Beaumont. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000.
  • Dan Stehman, Roy Harris: An American Musical Pioneer. Boston: Twayne Publishers (1984): 163 - 169

[edit] See also