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",
Quartettsatz, D 703 (Schubert) Ignaz von Sonnleithner on the first of the month. It was his first attempt at writing a string quartet since completing the String Quartet No. 11 in E major, D 353 in 1816. After completing the "allegro assai" first movement, Schubert wrote out the 41 bar exposition of the following "andante" movement before abandoning the work. As with the later "Unfinished" Symphony, there has been much speculation on why Schubert left the composition incomplete. One view presented by Bernard Shore is that Schubert put it aside to follow up another musical idea and never got back to it. Javier Arrebola