Beginnings
According to Arnold Schoenberg, this superstition began with Mahler, who, after writing his Eighth Symphony, wrote Das Lied von der Erde. Then he wrote his Ninth Symphony and thought he had beaten the curse, but died with his Tenth Symphony incomplete.
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."
The difficulties with this analysis are obvious. From Mahler's point of view, the only important victim of any "curse of the ninth" (Mahler is not known to have used the term) would have been Beethoven. Even Bruckner (with whom Mahler had been closely associated) fails to qualify: Bruckner died before completing the work that is now played as his (unfinished) "Ninth Symphony", with the result that his symphonic total is eight if only the completed canonical works are counted – and ten if the list includes the early F minor Symphony and the D minor Symphony now known as "No. 0" – both of them withdrawn by the composer. Bruckner was in fact superstitious about his own Ninth Symphony; but this was not because of any belief in a "curse of the ninth", but because it was in the same key as Beethoven's Ninth.
Schubert's inclusion in any list is similarly problematic. Mahler would not even have considered Schubert to have written nine symphonies, as the Great C major Symphony was reckoned as "No. 7" in Mahler's time. And while that symphony is now numbered as a ninth (and was followed by a tenth that remained uncompleted), this reckoning includes a "seventh symphony" that never progressed beyond an un-orchestrated sketch – and assumes that the composer's long-sought-after "Gmunden-Gastein Symphony" is merely a fable.
Similarly, Dvorak's "New World" Symphony would not have been considered a "ninth" in Mahler's time, as the work was published as "No.5", with four of Dvorak's earlier symphonies appearing only after his death. The situation is further complicated by the fact that Dvořák considered the score of his early C minor Symphony lost.
Read more about this topic: Curse Of The Ninth
Famous quotes containing the word beginnings:
“[Many artists], even the greatest ones, are not sure of their own existence. So they search for proof, they judge, they condemn. It strengthens them, it is the beginnings of existence. They are alone!”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The frantic search of five-year-olds for friends can thus be seen to forecast the beginnings of a basic shift in the parent-child relationship, a shift which will occur gradually over many long years, and in which a child needs not only the support of child allies engaged in the same struggle but also the understanding of his parents.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“These beginnings of commerce on a lake in the wilderness are very interesting,—these larger white birds that come to keep company with the gulls.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)