Do you believe that the ninth symphony syndrome (NSS) is real?

Question

Is it true or coincidence that some of the greatest composers of the Classical and Romantic era's such as Beethoven, Schubert, Dvorak, Mahler, as well as others, died after writing only nine symphonies and never finished their tenth?

Answer 1

Of course it is just coincidence. But it is a strange coincidence. Since Beethoven, many composers have not succeeded in writing more than 9 symphonies, among them

Malcolm Arnold
Anton Bruckner
Antonín Dvořák
Gustav Mahler
Franz Schubert (although a mistake in the numbering of his symphonies lists a non-existant (or, at best, spurious) 7th Symphony so there should only be 8 in the list)
Eduard Tubin
Ralph Vaughan Williams

Mahler got around the Ninth Symphony 'curse' by calling his Ninth Symphony 'Das Lied von der Erde' (The song of the earth) and not calling it 'No 9' but then died before properly completing his numbered 10th Symphony (!)

Having said all of this, many composers easily exceeded nine symphonies and so I suppose the simple law of averages will mean that some only reach a certain number.

Answer 2

this concept is finished rubbish. partly as a results of fact writing symphonies has long previous out of trend for composers. some experience they are not as much as the undertaking of Beethoven (Lenny Bernstein felt that way) others locate the type an anachronism of the previous (the futurists and an excellent form of modernists). besides there are a number of counter examples how symphonies did Shostakovich write? 15 what number did Hovhaness write? extra advantageous than 60 what number did Villa-lobos write? 12 different composers with extra advantageous than 9 symphonies: Don Gillis, William Schuman, Andrzej Panufnik, Robert Simpson, Vagn Holmboe, Henry Cowell, Joachim Raff, Malipiero, Alexander Moyzes. If i concept approximately this extra and regarded it up i might desire to in all hazard locate a minimum of 50 extra composers with extra advantageous than 9 symphonies to their call. additionally Mahler had sketches of a 10th symphony in the previous he died. Edit: i concept i might do an empirical attempt. so I wrote 9 symphonies this morning. this afternoon i replaced into nonetheless alive and nicely, so i concept in basic terms to verify I had extra perfect compose 2 extra. i will provide help to already know if I kick the bucket in the previous i'm getting to symphony 12

Answer 3

I don't know if that's real, but I don't doubt that talent such as that can wear a person out quickly. I wouldn't be surprised if it was just a case of the non-stop work that actually caused their deaths instead of a supposed syndrome. That'd kill anyone, regardless of what they did for a living.

Answer 4

I've personally never heard of NSS. But that is pretty strange.

Answer 5

no