The arts and politics in music at the University of Edinburgh, in her book "Irony, Satire, Parody and the Grotesque in the Music of Shostakovich", in "the traditional Russian perception of the arts", an "interrelationship between artistic technique and ideological content is the main aesthetic criterion" (ix; cf. Blois). Ludwig van Beethoven did not use the original title "Ode to Freedom" of Friedrich Schiller's lyric, known in English as "Ode to Joy" (1785), in setting it to music in the final movement of his Ninth Symphony (1824), which "Napoleonic censors had forced the poet to change to 'Ode to Joy'." After the fall of
Curse of the ninth written a Ninth stood too close to the hereafter." The difficulties with this analysis are obvious. From Mahler's point of view, the only important victim of any "curse of the ninth" (Mahler is not known to have used the term) would have been Ludwig van Beethoven. Even Anton Bruckner (with whom Mahler had been closely associated) fails to qualify: Bruckner died "before completing" the work that is now played as his (unfinished) "Ninth Symphony", with the result that his symphonic total is eight if only the completed canonical works are counted – and ten if the list includes the early