Curse of the ninth "serious" music criticism. Though composers can indeed be found who died after achieving nine symphonies (the most famous example perhaps being Ludwig van Beethoven), nine is not a statistically predominant total in the history of the symphony. In addition, while some very prominent composers (e.g. Schubert, Dvořák, Spohr, Bruckner, Mahler, and Vaughan Williams) are regularly adduced as examples, several of them are only credited with having "composed nine symphonies" as a result of error or oversimplification (see below). According to Arnold Schoenberg, this superstition began with Gustav Mahler, who, after writing his Eighth Symphony, wrote "Das Lied von der Erde",
Symphony, D 708A (Schubert) the crescendo after the first statement of the theme is strongly reminiscent of Rossini's style. Unusually, the music reaches the key of A major during a climactic passage, using the chords of A major and C major. This means that the horns, trumpets and timpani have to remain silent despite their being conventionally present during climactic passages. This creates problems in orchestrating the symphony in Schubert's style, and is probably why the symphony was left unfinished. Due to the impossibility of using those instruments when necessary, Schubert considered using trombones for the finale, which could be used there. But because