Counterexamples
Some counterexamples are: Andrzej Panufnik (10; if one includes two early lost symphonies, 12), 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was actually choral), Eduard Tubin (10, died writing his eleventh symphony), William Schuman (10; his first two were withdrawn), Alun Hoddinott (10), David Diamond (11), Joachim Raff (11, as well as an early destroyed one), Edmund Rubbra (11; his ninth symphony was choral), Robert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), Dmitri Shostakovich (15), Rued Langgaard (16 plus an unnumbered choral symphony, Sinfonia Interna), Henry Cowell (17), Allan Pettersson (17), Lev Knipper (20), Jānis Ivanovs (21), Mieczysław Weinberg (22), Nikolai Myaskovsky (27), Havergal Brian (32), Alan Hovhaness (67), Derek Bourgeois (72), and Leif Segerstam (258). Composers before Beethoven, such as Joseph Haydn (104) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (41), are not considered relevant to this superstition.
Read more about this topic: Curse Of The Ninth