There is a belief among connoisseurs of classical music that the composer, who wrote his Ninth Symphony, will face difficult life trials and even an early death. This is exactly what happened with Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner, Dvořák, Mahler and other creators of great works, who left for another world a short time after the creation of the Ninth Symphony.
The most magnificent work
Before Beethoven, who died in 1827, this pattern for some reason did not work. For example, Mozart (1756-1791) wrote about 40 symphonies, and Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) wrote more than a hundred! Probably, the creation of the legend was influenced by the significance of Beethoven's magnificent Ninth Symphony.
The authority of the Ninth is so high that in 1980, releasing the first joint CDs, Philips and Sony increased their diameter to 12 centimeters so that this piece, which sounds 74 minutes, could fit there in its entirety.
The composer worked on Symphony No. 9 in D minor for several years, already being completely deaf. This work is considered the pinnacle of his work. The score is over 200 pages long, the last movement, entitled "Ode to Joy" (lyrics by Friedrich Schiller), is currently used as the anthem of the European Union.
In the last years of his life, the composer began work on the tenth symphony, but death prevented its completion.
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Has not recovered from a cold
Roughly the same thing happened with Beethoven's younger contemporary, the Austrian composer Franz Schubert (1797-1828). Ironically, he was never able to recover from a cold, which he caught at the funeral of his elder friend, and died a year and a half after his death.
Leaving behind nine symphonies! True, two of them are considered incomplete.
Another Austrian composer, Anton Bruckner, passed away in 1896. He was born in the year of the premiere of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and considered it his greatest work. It is curious that Bruckner wrote his Ninth Symphony in 1883. But the composer basically considered the first two to be just student's works - and did not give them serial numbers. Thus, his eleventh symphony actually became the ninth. He initially wanted to draw some parallels with Beethoven's work - in particular, he chose the same key in D minor. Of the four parts he had conceived, Bruckner managed to write only three before his death.
Bruckner's pupil, composer Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), was prone to mysticism and superstition. It was he who first drew attention to the curse of the ninth symphony. Having created eight such works, Mahler was terrified of what might happen next. He tried to cheat fate. Firstly, he did not follow Beethoven and chose the key of D major, secondly, he called the work a "symphonic poem" and, thirdly, in parallel began work on the tenth symphony.
Alas, a short time after the end of the ninth symphony, Mahler died. His tenth symphony remained only in outline.
The trend continues
After Mahler's death, many started talking about the curse of the ninth symphony. They began to explore the work of various composers - and it turned out that only a few of them reached such a milestone. For example. Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), Robert Schumann (1810-1856) and Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) wrote four symphonies each, Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) and Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) five each, Peter Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) - six.
In 1893, the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) completed his Ninth Symphony - and lived happily for more than ten years. But he never wrote a single symphony.
It is safe to say that in the future, almost all composers knew about the mystical meaning of the Ninth Symphony and took this circumstance into account in their work.
Alexander Glazunov (1865-1936), having composed eight symphonies, in 1910 set about creating the ninth. But he left work on it - probably anticipating what it might lead to. After that, he happily lived up to the age of 70.
Many of the greatest symphonists of the 20th century also did not tempt fate: the Frenchman Arthur Honegger (1892-1955) created five symphonies, the Dane Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) and the German Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) - six each, the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953), Finn Jan Sibelius (1865-1957) and American Charles Ives (1874-1954) - seven each.
The Soviet composer Nikita Bogoslovsky (1913-2004) acted like Glazunov. In 1991 he wrote his Eighth Symphony and immediately called it "The Last". After that he lived for 13 years, although he no longer created any notable works, both in the classical and in the song genre.
German composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1905-1963) passed away when he began writing his Ninth Symphony. The same happened with the British Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) and Malcolm Henry Arnold (1921-2006), the Swede Kurt Utterberg (1887-1974), the Austrian Egon Welles (1885-1974), the American Roger Sessions (1896) -1985). Although, as we can see, they worked on their ninth symphonies, being quite mature people. Nevertheless, the trend is showing!
Soviet composer of German origin Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) died while working on the Ninth Symphony. The widow handed the score to a friend of the late Nikolai Korndorf, but he soon died of a heart attack. True, the case was successfully completed by the Russian composer Alexander Raskatov.
Passed the milestone
However, the 20th century also knows many examples of how the authors who created the Ninth Symphony continued to successfully create further. The most striking example is the Soviet composer Nikolai Myaskovsky (1881-1950). He wrote a landmark work in 1927 - and after that brought the total number of his symphonies to 27. True, most music critics agree that Myaskovsky's compositions are significantly inferior to similar works by Beethoven in terms of the strength of their emotional impact.
More than nine symphonies were composed by the German Hans Werner Henze (1926-2012) and the Swedish-Estonian composer Eduard Tubin (1905-1982): they have ten each, the Englishman Edmund Rabbra (1901-1986) and the American David Diamond (1915-2005) - 11 each, the Brazilian Heitor Vila-Lobos (1887-1959) and the Frenchman Darius Millau (1892-1974) - 12 symphonies each, the American Henry Cowell (1897-1965) and the Swede Allan Pettersson (1911-1980) - 17 each., the list is quite impressive, and it can be continued. And the American Alan Hovaness (1911-2000) created 67 symphonies in general!
Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975) passed the fatal figure in a peculiar way. In October 1943, he announced that he was beginning to compose his Ninth Symphony. The work clearly echoed Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and was dedicated to the coming victory over fascism. But work stalled. As a result, the composer switched to creating a short chamber work of an ironic sense and called it Symphony No. 9 in E flat major. Moreover, Shostakovich's authority was so great that this creation was nominated for the Stalin Prize.
But here the composer faced a fiasco - instead of an award, Dmitry Shostakovich received a severe blow to prestige. He was accused of formalism and servility to the West, stripped of the title of professor and fired from the Moscow Conservatory. Shostakovich's works were no longer performed for a long time.
The composer created his next symphony only in 1953. It was a pathetic piece with a life-affirming ending. Thus, approximately what Beethoven expressed in the Ninth Symphony, Shostakovich said in the Tenth. Later Dmitry Dmitrievich increased the number of his symphonies to 15.
Said and did the best he could
How can you explain the mystical meaning of the number 9 in relation to the number of works of the symphonic genre? First of all - the influence of Beethoven's personality, whose Ninth Symphony became not only the pinnacle of his work, but also one of the greatest works of this genre, which, according to many musicians, is simply impossible to surpass in terms of the strength of its emotional impact. And then the laws of numerology came into play. After all, it is the number 9 that has been considered a symbol of constancy and cyclicity since ancient times (since the sum of the digits of any number multiple of nine is also completely divisible by 9). You can remember that a child spends 9 months in the mother's womb, in art there are 9 muses, in Christianity - 9 angelic ranks, in hell - 9 circles, the most dangerous storm wave is called the ninth wave …
In many mythologies and religions, the nine represents the choice of the spirit that has overcome the vanity of human aspirations. This is how the message of Beethoven's symphony is perceived - the soul of the author seems to be completing its mission on Earth and the person calmly leaves for another world, because he said and did everything he could.