# Why just stop at 9?



## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

Most composers if they are lucky enough to compose 9 symphonies stop at 9, is it because they're too old to write another by that time or just don't want to surpass Beethoven in number of symphonies or what?


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Usually I think it must be coincidental, but in Mahler's case - it was something he actively avoided. In fact he feared death if he should have passed 9:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_the_ninth


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

Manok said:


> Most composers if they are lucky enough to compose 9 symphonies stop at 9, is it because they're too old to write another by that time or just don't want to surpass Beethoven in number of symphonies or what?


There _was _a hangup in the nineteenth century about exceeding nine symphonies, though the truth is less obvious. For example, Schubert didn't complete nine symphonies - he left several unfinished. Bruckner didn't finish his ninth, but then there were two unnumbered, but perfectly good, symphonies - so he actually finished ten.

Of course, there were plenty of composers, post-Beethoven, form Schumann and Berlioz to Berwald, who didn't get to nine. I think it is more likely that around nine was a reasonable number to have composed in a lifetime though, as I have said, the number of composers who actually completed precisely nine is rather small. Beethoven, Mahler, Dvorak: who else?


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Then again...Segerstam, Haydn, Hovhaness, Vranicky, Mozart, Gossec, Holzbauer, Sammartini, Ordonez, Pettersson, etc., etc.


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## Hesoos (Jun 9, 2012)

After the ninth usually comes the death. If I was a composer I woudn't write more than 8 symphonies... 
heh heh I'm just kidding :lol:


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

The 9-symphonies composers are a definite minority. But they also include V-Williams, Tubin, Schubert, Sessions, Klenau and Arnold.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

I think they're lazy! I read that somewhere and I believe it...


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Wellesz composed nine also. And he showed a nice symmetric touch by composing nine string quartets.


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## Hesoos (Jun 9, 2012)

Maybe most of the composers just want to compare with Beethoven. Just a tradition.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Beethoven actually started a 10th. There's a few recordings on youtube of it. I have listened to it but not within recent memory. Schubert also did a "10th," Brian Newbould did a reconstruction in the 1980's (or '90's?). I had a cd of it, it was even performed here in the 1990's, not long after it came out. So what Jeremy says above is spot on.

So maybe_ the curse of the 9th_ is a load of baloney. But how was Mahler to know, when these works where not discovered back then? Even Schubert's 9th only surfaced quite a while after he composed it, when Schumann found it in the archives in Vienna, I think.

Wierd how we don't associate this with, say, piano concertos. Beethoven composed five (if you don't count his transcription of the violin concerto), so did Saint-Saens and Prokofiev. Also Martinu, though he also did a_ Piano Concertino_ or two. Does this mean anything? Dunno.


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## Hesoos (Jun 9, 2012)

Sid James said:


> Beethoven actually started a 10th. There's a few recordings on youtube of it. I have listened to it but not within recent memory. Schubert also did a "10th," Brian Newbould did a reconstruction in the 1980's (or '90's?). I had a cd of it, it was even performed here in the 1990's, not long after it came out. So what Jeremy says above is spot on.
> 
> So maybe_ the curse of the 9th_ is a load of baloney. But how was Mahler to know, when these works where not discovered back then? Even Schubert's 9th only surfaced quite a while after he composed it, when Schumann found it in the archives in Vienna, I think.
> 
> Wierd how we don't associate this with, say, piano concertos. Beethoven composed five (if you don't count his transcription of the violin concerto), so did Saint-Saens and Prokofiev. Also Martinu, though he also did a_ Piano Concertino_ or two. Does this mean anything? Dunno.


How interesting!!!

I didn't know about the Beethoven's 10th and Schubert 10th!!!
I need to try on youtube.


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## maestro267 (Jul 25, 2009)

Maybe the curse is why Philip Glass has written his 9th and 10th Symphonies in quick succession. The 10th is due to be premiered in August. That's still 2 months away, though...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

maestro267 said:


> Maybe the curse is why Philip Glass has written his 9th and 10th Symphonies in quick succession...


& I think Penderecki is up to 8 symphonies. Correct me if I'm wrong. But technically not 8, its 7, as his 6th symphony I think is still a kind of 'work in progress,' not fully complete and maybe not recorded/performed. So he's got a kind of 'loophole' if he does do a 9th.


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## MaestroViolinist (May 22, 2012)

9 is the number of completion.


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## maestro267 (Jul 25, 2009)

Sid James said:


> & I think Penderecki is up to 8 symphonies. Correct me if I'm wrong. But technically not 8, its 7, as his 6th symphony I think is still a kind of 'work in progress,' not fully complete and maybe not recorded/performed. So he's got a kind of 'loophole' if he does do a 9th.


That's true. Maybe we can call that 'doing a Schubert'. His 8th is unfinished, and his 7th is basically nonexistent. Didn't stop him from dying after his "9th" though.


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## Lenfer (Aug 15, 2011)

emiellucifuge said:


> Usually I think it must be coincidental, but in Mahler's case - it was something he actively avoided. In fact he feared death if he should have passed 9:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_the_ninth


I didn't know this how interesting thanks *Emiellucifuge*. Now that *Mahler* is dead I bet he wishes he'd gone past 9.


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## Moira (Apr 1, 2012)

MaestroViolinist said:


> 9 is the number of completion.


Double digits mess with the computer spacing setting.


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## Guest (Jul 9, 2012)

It's not quantity, it's quality!! And Beethoven is very high quality. Not only that, none of his symphonies sounds the same.


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## jani (Jun 15, 2012)

Sibelius never composed more than seven symphonies because he wanted every symphony to have something totally new, Beethoven did the same thing but he composed nine symphonies. I believe that the his 10th symphony stuff don't sound what his 10th would have sounded if would have lived long enough to finish it. He would have changed it many times until he is happy.
Sibelius finished his 8th many times but burned the scores because he wasn't happy to it.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

The myth of 9 only works if you count very selectively. The only major composers I can think of offhand who landed squarely on nine are Dvorak and Vaughan Williams. As mentioned above, Schubert has nine only if you count the "Unfinished" symphony... but if you're going to count that unfinished symphony, you might as well count the four or five other unfinished symphonies he left behind, which puts his total into the teens. Same goes for the unfinished 10ths by Beethoven and Mahler, not to mention that Beethoven also has the "Battle Symphony" that no one cares about. At least one musicologist has suggested that Mahler wrote several symphonies, later destroyed, before he wrote his official No. 1. Bruckner is usually cited in this myth but he definitely has more than nine: in addition to the nine "officially" numbered symphonies, he has an unnumbered Symphony in F Minor (the so-called "Study Symphony") and a "Symphony No. 0" in D Minor, not to mention the fact that some of his numbered symphonies exist in different versions, some of them so different from each other as to constitute new compositions in their own right.


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

Jeremy Marchant said:


> There _was _a hangup in the nineteenth century about exceeding nine symphonies, though the truth is less obvious. For example, Schubert didn't complete nine symphonies - he left several unfinished. Bruckner didn't finish his ninth, but then there were two unnumbered, but perfectly good, symphonies - so he actually finished ten.
> 
> Of course, there were plenty of composers, post-Beethoven, form Schumann and Berlioz to Berwald, who didn't get to nine. I think it is more likely that around nine was a reasonable number to have composed in a lifetime though, as I have said, the number of composers who actually completed precisely nine is rather small. Beethoven, Mahler, Dvorak: who else?


Who else? A few:

Malcolm Arnold
Kurt Atterberg
Andrei Eshpai
Alexander Glazunov (9th unfinished)
Paul von Klenau
László Lajtha
Peter Mennin
Vincent Persichetti
Cipriani Potter
Harald Sæverud
Alfred Schnittke
Roger Sessions
Elie Siegmeister
Alexandre Tansman
Eduard Tubin (9th unfinished)
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Egon Wellesz


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

DM - Schnittke actually composed ten, but the early '0' (not Schnittke's own designation, presumably) was suppressed and the 9th had to be reconstructed due to the state of the original score (the composer was all but incapacitated by then so a lot of the penwork was difficult to make out) - the opening movement of the 9th was also without a tempo marking.


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

elgars ghost said:


> DM - Schnittke actually composed ten, but the early '0' (not Schnittke's own designation, presumably) was suppressed and the 9th had to be reconstructed due to the state of the original score (the composer was all but incapacitated by then so a lot of the penwork was difficult to make out) - the opening movement of the 9th was also without a tempo marking.


I am aware of Schnittke's 0th (0st? 0nd? 0rd), but allowed myself the same leeway as some have done with Bruckner (who has a No '0' AND a No '00').


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

If Bruckner comes back as a ghost I guess he'll write Symphony No. OOOOOoooooOOOOOoooooOOOOOooooooo

I'll leave quietly.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

joen_cph said:


> The 9-symphonies composers are a definite minority. But they also include V-Williams, Tubin, Schubert, Sessions, Klenau and Arnold.


Tubin Composed 10 didn't he?

http://www.amazon.com/Tubin-Complet...&ie=UTF8&qid=1344491689&sr=1-1&keywords=Tubin


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## techniquest (Aug 3, 2012)

> If Bruckner comes back as a ghost I guess he'll write Symphony No. OOOOOoooooOOOOOoooooOOOOOooooooo


Chortle!! :lol::lol:


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## GraemeG (Jun 30, 2009)

I don't even think Mahler qualifies as 9, given _Das Lied von der Erde_.
You can't really make any special case for composing exactly 9 symphonies. It just looks that way...


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