Mahler Tried Outsmarting Ninth Symphony

Austrian composer Gustav Mahler strongly believed in the Curse of the Ninth, the superstition that a composer's ninth symphony would be his last. Hoping to cheat the curse, he left his ninth symphonic work, Das Lied von der Erde, unnumbered and called it a song cycle. Mahler then completed a numbered Ninth Symphony but never heard it performed. He began a Tenth but died in 1911 before he could finish it.

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