Adventures with Beethoven

Scene Four

Curse of the Ninth!

The “Curse of the Ninth” is one of the best-known superstitions in classical music. Beginning with Beethoven, who died two years after the completion of his Symphony No. 9, it became a somewhat common idea that a composer’s ninth symphony would be their last and that they would die either while writing the symphony or shortly thereafter or before they could complete a tenth symphony.

This superstition began in the late-Romantic period after the deaths of Beethoven and Schubert, who had each died while working on their tenth symphonies and Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) who died while completing his ninth. The composer Arnold Schoenberg said that the idea began with Gustav Mahler. After completing his Symphony No. 8, Mahler’s next work was Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth). Although Mahler thought of it as a song cycle (a series of vocal works, usually accompanied by piano, that feature texts usually by the same poet), structurally the work was a symphony, featuring a vocal soloist with the orchestra. Next Mahler wrote Symphony No. 9 and thought he had outsmarted the curse, however Mahler died during the composition of his Tenth Symphony.

Although it appears that Mahler placed some credence in this theory, which allows some listeners to hear a heart-wrenching quality in Mahler’s later works, Mahler had other issues in his life at the time as well. His marriage was strained because of his wife’s affairs and Mahler knew about his serious heart condition, both of which could account for the angst in his late symphonies. Mahler would have only been aware of Beethoven and Bruckner dying after their ninth symphonies. Schubert’s and Dvořák’s works were published with different numbers at the time (Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 was originally his Seventh and Dvořák’s Ninth was No. 5). Also Louis Spohr (1784-1859) who is sometimes mentioned on the cursed list, wrote ten symphonies in his lifetime, however he withdrew his tenth because he was unhappy with it.

After Mahler a few other composers died after completing their ninth symphony and were held up as part of the “Curse of the Ninth” including Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904), Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), Roger Sessions (1896-1985), David Maslanka, and Vincent Persichetti. In 2012 composer Phillip Glass said, “everyone is afraid to do a ninth. It is a jinx that people think about.” Glass, meanwhile, has gone on to write 12 symphonies of his own. He is among a group of composers who have managed to avoid the curse including Dmitri Shostakovich who wrote 15, Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) with 12, Havergal Brian completed 32, and Leif Selim Segerstam (b 1944) has, as of April 2021, written 344. Although an interesting story, as journalist Maddy Shaw Roberts wrote, “The Curse of the Nine is a great story, and it probably fueled a lot of the angst behind Mahler’s heart-wrenching symphonies. But perhaps it’s best to treat it as superstition.”Many different doctors and scholars have tried to solve the puzzle of Beethoven’s deafness. One major clue that has been studied is a lock of Beethoven’s hair. After the composer’s death, a young musician named Ferdinand Hiller snipped off some strands of hair from Beethoven’s body, a common custom at the time. This hair stayed in Hiller’s family for almost one hundred years. The hair then became the property of Dr. Kay Fremming who lived in Denmark during World War II. The doctor helped numerous Jewish families escape to freedom in Sweden. Some scholars guess that an escaping Jewish family gave Fremming the memento as a thank you for his help. Dr. Fremming’s daughter put the hair up for auction in 1994. It was purchased by Dr. Alfredo Guevera for $7,000. He kept 160 strands for himself and donated the remaining 422 hairs to the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University.