Curse of The Ninth

The curse of the ninth is a superstition connected with the history of classical music. In essence, it is the belief that a "ninth symphony" is destined to be a composer's last; i.e. that he or she will be "fated" to die after writing it, or before completing a "tenth". To those who give credence to the notion, a composer who produces a ninth symphony has reached a decisive landmark – and to then embark on a tenth is a challenge to "fate".

The idea is really a folk-notion that persists in popular journalism, and is not supported in musicology or serious music criticism. Though composers can indeed be found who died after achieving nine symphonies (the most famous example being Ludwig van Beethoven), "nine" is not a statistically predominant total in the history of the symphony. In addition, while some very prominent composers (e.g. Schubert, Dvořák, Bruckner, Mahler, and Vaughan Williams) are regularly adduced as examples, the fact is that several of them are only credited with having "composed nine symphonies" as a result of error or oversimplification (see below).