Where did the ‘curse of the ninth’ come from?
Rock ‘n’ roll’s unfortunate connotation as ‘the devil’s music’ has latched onto the public’s subconscious since Robert Johnson first picked up that fateful guitar, reimagining the blues and reckoning with images of selling your soul to the devil at the crossroads.
Johnson’s early strain of rock music separated itself from religion and became its own form of worship, where singing became a means of rebellion, no longer reserved for church hymns but instead led towards a kind of liberation. Assuming a ‘curse’ in the eyes of religious devotees, rock music has since been associated with devilish activity, but it was not the first music genre to feel its wrath.
In the 19th century, classical musicians became afflicted with the ‘curse of the ninth’, a belief that, after completing their ninth symphonies, composers were fated to die. Hysterics ensued, but the myth was not entirely unsubstantiated, as one of the most renowned musicians to this day, German composer and pianist Ludwig van Beethoven, was the first to succumb to the anathema.
Beethoven’s ‘Ninth Symphony’, composed between 1822 to 1824, preceded three years of ill health that would afflict him, and to which he would succumb at the age of 56. Then there was Austrian composer Franz Schubert, who met a similar fate with his ninth, known as ‘The Great’, passed two years after writing it, from 1824 to 1826. On the first anniversary of Beethoven’s death, Schubert would give the only public performance of his career, before succumbing to typhoid fever at 31 years old.
The curse seemed to lift for a period of time, that is, until the 20th century, which endured the unfortunate passing of two brilliant composers, one being the Czech Antonín Dvořák, who produced his ninth, referred to as ‘From the New World’ and ‘New World Symphony’, in 1893. He would pass away from an undiagnosed cause 11 years later, in 1904, while half a century later, English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, despite his excellent health, would die in 1958 at 85, having composed his ninth two years prior.
However, the so-called superstition of classical music’s ‘curse’ is said to have begun with Gustav Mahler. Born in 1860, the Austro-Bohemian composer’s career followed the deaths of Beethoven and Schubert, but his trepidation kept him on edge with a deep desire to defeat this seemingly undeniable fate. When the time came to begin composing his ninth, Mahler devised a loophole: he would avoid calling his piece a ‘symphony’, composing ‘Das Lied von der Erde’ (‘The Song of the Earth’) before his ‘Symphony No 9’. Sadly, the curse saw through his plans and in 1911, during the composition of his tenth symphony, he was struck with a sudden bout of pneumonia and died before its completion and before he could hear his previous two works performed live.
Regardless, many composers escaped the curse unscathed, but the superstition loomed in the classical world for decades, continuing into the contemporary age. Philip Glass told the Los Angeles Times in 2012, “Everyone is afraid to do a ninth. It is a jinx that people think about”, going so far as to record his ninth and tenth symphonies together, as a safety measure, and it’s evidently worked in Glass’ favour.
In line with the ’27 Club’ and the Scottish curse, the ‘curse of the ninth’ may very well just be a longstanding fallacy with some unfortunate coincidences or even random happenstance that people are only too eager to serve as evidence of the claim. Similar to the birth of rock ‘n’ roll, the mystery that resides in the classical realm is part of its strange charm, carrying through generations with orchestral transcendence.
