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 615 (Schubert) Symphony, D 615 (Schubert) Schubert's Symphony in D major, D 615, is an unfinished work that survives in an incomplete four-page, 259-bar sketch written for piano solo. It is one of Schubert's six unfinished symphonies. It was begun in May 1818, with initial sketches made for the opening sections of the first movement and finale. He abandoned this symphony after this initial phase of work and never returned to it, probably due to dissatisfaction with it, although Schubert would live for another ten years. Although conductor and composer Brian Newbould has made a performing version of the fragments, a full