Mahler & the “Curse of the Ninth”

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.

From the midpoint of the 20th century onward, after two world wars and in an age of jet travel and the atomic energy, this phrase was still familiar but was dismissed as quaint superstition. To Gustav Mahler, who was born only a decade after the midpoint of the 19th century and 33 years after Beethoven’s death, it was something more complex. It represented the dreaded possibility of nine symphonies marking the limit of human artistic inquiry, and a signpost toward inevitable death.

If you attend Pacific Symphony’s concerts in early January, you can leave your day-to-day concerns behind as you listen to a Mahler Ninth: once the music begins, you are in the realm of the eternal.