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. 8 (Schubert) (like the first movement) is in sonata form (as are all Schubert's symphonic finales) and in a very similar style and mood. If the "entr'acte" indeed started life as the finale of this symphony, then Schubert evidently recycled it (probably at that stage unorchestrated) from the symphony to the incidental music, presumably orchestrating it for the play and perhaps making compositional changes. British pianist and Schubert specialist Anthony Goldstone prepared a new 4-movement performing edition of the Symphony for piano duet, using the transcription of the first two movements prepared by Huttenbrenner, his own completion of Schubert's Scherzo, and the