Mahler & the “Curse of the Ninth”

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When Carl St.Clair conducts Mahler’s Ninth Symphony next week (Jan. 12, 13, and 14), you might want to reflect on how the composer had to wrestle with the “curse of the Ninth” in order to complete this great work.

The idea of the “curse of the ninth” is pretty uncomplicated—simply the notion that composers are destined to die before completing a ninth symphony. Arnold Schoenberg, the great modernist and father of the Second Viennese School, asserted that the idea of a ninth-symphony jinx originated with Mahler, whose thoughts never seemed to be far from the meaning of human life, mortality, and the possibility of an afterlife.