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 No. 10 (Beethoven/Cooper) by Universal Edition, Vienna, and appeared in a new edition in 2013. After completing the Ninth Symphony in 1824, Beethoven devoted his energies largely to composing his late string quartets, although there are contemporary references to some work on a symphony (e.g. in his letter of 18 March 1827); allegedly he played a movement of this piece on the piano for his friend Karl Holz, whose description of what he heard matches the sketches identified by Cooper. Cooper claimed that he found over 250 bars of sketches for the first movement, which he wove together to form the movement, keeping