Choral Fantasy (Beethoven) the "Choral Fantasy" text – universal fraternity with the meeting of arts – evokes similar feelings as the "Ode to Joy" text. Beethoven himself acknowledged the kinship of the two works. In a letter of 1824, when he was writing the Ninth Symphony, he described his project as "a setting of the words of Schiller's immortal "Lied an die Freude" in the same way as my pianoforte fantasia with chorus, but on a far grander scale." The "Choral Fantasy" theme is itself taken from earlier work by Beethoven: it is a slightly modified version of the composer's "Gegenliebe", a lied
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